hihi im here from the radar teehee... (the july 24th fanart )! i was wondering if you would ever post a speedpaint of those pieces..? or if you could describe a process for those pieces because Wow those drawings are Amazing. your art in general is so so so gonjeous the colors are hypotnizing im drooling but for those pieces specifclaly... i dont think ive ever seen anyone capture that fever dream esque , memory buried deep in ur subconscious vibe so perfectly before ... and i was wondering how you did it.... becuase wowie zowie ong #flames .. thank you!
thank you for the compliments <3 I'm happy cause these were exactly the eerie feelings I was going for.
unfortunately I didnt record a speedpaint for these! I'll try to break down my process as best I can from what I remember.
first, what I do before I start any project is make a mood board/reference board on pureref (which is a program I heartliy recommend!), in this case I saved a lot of pics that had the same vibe (strong flash camera pics taken in forests or nature to see how the light works on bodies and foliage). they don't have to always be direct references, sometimes they can also just infer a vibe or a palette.
I knew I wanted the three pieces to have completely different body parts "photographed" so I had to keep them coherent by using roughly the same palette, graphical elements and effects.
I used another fanart of Adam I had done previously as reference to draw his features, for him as well as most of the characters I draw (unless there's an actor involved) I tend to never use a single model but rather a mixture of multiple faces (for Adam even some female faces!) as well as something from my imagination alone. I like making up new folks and I have a very specific way I picture these book characters.
the abstract/graphical parts I added last to every piece as something that could unify everything + symbolize the Magician card in different ways.
I think most of the eerie effect done successfully is in the post-production after the proper painting phase. for example I added all these textures that fake the "old camera" effect, like the lights close to the pov and the motes of dust, the grainy filter (a layer of 50% grey + noise filter set to I think linear light blending mode with low opacity) and I added a layer of blur and masked most of it - just leaving out the parts in the foreground that would be most affected. there's also probably a very slight chromatic aberration done by isolating rgb channels (in layer style) and shifting the whole layer just a little.
I hope this is helpful! TLDR honestly it sounds clichè but reference is key when you want something to look convincing. If you want to paint something and make it look like a fever-dream inbued old camera pic you need to understand what that means and what all these pics have in common first.