Roua, Spirit of Hope

Final painting

If I use every tool I have I can basically guarantee a decent painting. Unfortunately, maximizing quality is time-consuming. In the interest of speeding up, join me as I weed out the weak links in my bloated process.

I start with an idea, in this case a badass female character. Then I explore images that can lead to interesting visual ways to represent that idea.
(Photo by Joshua Sortino - Unsplash)

Next is thumbnail sketches. These are the best 4 out of something like 50 small sketches. I sketch until I have at least one option I'm REALLY happy with, in this case option 3. Even at this stage I'm thinking about contrast and visual hierarchy.

From here I do a simplified value sketch, working out some more elements and "proving" to myself that the idea can work. I try to keep in mind what value the colors will be, it's just easier to keep it grayscale at this stage.

Then I see what color can do for the image. I was unsure what was best for focusing attention on the character while still having the ancestors read as a secondary focus. I should probably do less options that are more bold and distinct.

I don't have a suit of armor, and because this character is front and center, getting really good reference for it was a must. I sculpted this 6" tall maquette with aluminum wire and Super Sculpey (Firm) polymer clay. Photo taken at sunset.

Here's where I messed up. I think putting a lot of effort into a maquette AND a final drawing is probably too redundant. I should have been looser at this stage. I think this drawing sealed my fate and made the final painting unnecessarily stiff.

I start laying in the colors underneath the drawing layer. I'm confident in my looseness because I know the drawing will keep me warm and safe at night.

At this point it's clear that creating some work paths will help keep the foreground and background separate. I used them all throughout the final stages to paint within the lines of the character without painting "outside the lines" into the background.

And here's where I spent the most time. Before this project I had NO IDEA how to paint metal. I never occurred to me that would be a requirement to paint a suit of armor. This is my first attempt on the breastplate.

I went and did some armor studies, and worked it to this point. It still looked too matte and I was regretting not painting my maquette with metallic paint for the photoshoot.

I refused to "just finish it" and move on. I went into Blender and sculpted the breastplate digitally. I painted a custom skybox for what I thought the colors should be and played with the degree of shiny vs. matte for the metal. Voilà!

Using the Blender reference and my maquette combined, I was able to get it to this point. Here I was still painting the highlights too uniform across edges.

From here it was just a matter of rendering the hell out of things, making sure colors were working together to give the illusion of the lighting I was after.

The final stage here was a matter of further harmonizing colors, desaturating, softening edges, and doing everything I can to make the image clear and focused.

Painting process from start to finish

Lessons learned