Bar I have a question - What's the process of your art like? Like how do you do blocking, posing, draft lines, colouring, etc? Your work is always dropdead gorgeous. * v *
hi melly 👋you’re so sweet ty.
disclaimer: this is purely informative, not a tutorial. I’ve learned a lot of bad habits from learning as I go. I’ll try to take screenshots when i draw in the future to make this easier to grasp!
setting the stage: i use photoshop cc, which is a monthly subscription. I’ve optimized my workflow for speed and ease. one brush (in varied sizes) and one layer most of the time. it works fine for simple character portraits, but probably not a good choice for something complex with a bg.
draw basic shapes like circles for the head, triangles for the chest, etc. the spine is this kind of wavy line that is supposed to establish the center of mass, right?
spend way too much time getting the face to look good
if the head is pretty and the big shapes make sense, start using a bigger brush to make the remaining shapes more 3d, simultaneously (i think this is incorrect, doing both at the same time) defining smaller shapes like fingers. all the while think really hard about perspective. start to sweat
ok so I’ve established the values (dark/light) and achieved a medium level of detail. up until now the drawing is monochrome. it’s time to color. there isn’t much rhyme or reason to color choice, it’s intuitive on the level of “I want to draw something VERY BLUE”. so I spend some time thinking, maybe putting some color swatches next to each other on the canvas.
once I’ve decided, I change the brush mode to apply color additively, subtractively, etc on top of the “framework”. note that this IS inherently destructive, because you can’t undo beyond a few steps. what’s done is done. this helps me go faster and not overthink decisions. use layers to achieve the same effect non-destructively.
keep adding detail until it feels finished. clean up stray lines. pick out edges with a highlight color. at this finishing step I may apply a color filter or put a gradient flood fill at a low opacity over the entire image to unify the color palette. unharmonious hues often sneak in during painting. i also check for areas that are difficult to “read”, like tangent lines.
in my process there are no rules or best practices (this is wrong btw). head too big? select it and shrink the area (bad). midtones too dark or muddy? brighten the hell out of them (pretty bad). feeling frustrated with a drawing? trash it and start a new one (this is fine)
Btw this is what I mean by brush modes! These are some examples of modes I use frequently
Happy to answer any further questions :D
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