Here’s a look at the process I used to complete my piece for the ArtOrder Dungeon Delve Challenge. You can view a larger version of the finished piece by itself in yesterday’s post.
Process: DDC
Stage Zero (not shown): You will have to use your imagination for this one. A thumbnail sketch is a small drawing (mine are actually about 2 or 3 thumbnails high) that allows me to work out composition and lighting. I settled on one with three interesting shapes (which later became the adventurer, the stone head, and the pillar/skull structure on the left of the drawing). There is no detail and the sketch takes no longer than 10 minutes.
Stage 1: The sketch. This is important for two reasons. A good sketch helps you concentrate on painting and not drawing later in the game by taking the guesswork out of the process. If I know how things fit into place, and that my proportions are generally correct, I can concentrate on things like value and color.
Second, in commercial work, the sketch allows a client to see what they are getting. This doesn’t mean it will be an exact indication of the final, but adding in some requested detail such as in a character’s costuming helps avoid unpleasant surprises, unnecessary revisions, and keeps everybody happy.
Stage 2: Tonal Study. Tone is the degree to which values in a painting change from dark to light. If this piece were black and white, I would refine this and it would become a final. Because this piece is to be in color, I could stay loose at this point.
Stage 3: Base Color: In acrylic I would usually take care of this during the tonal study phase. In photoshop, I find it easier to do a grayscale drawing in black and white, then add a new layer (set to multiply, color, of soft light usually). Then I fill this layer with a base color, in this case brown. I chose brown because the painting would eventually have a earth-tone type palette with some gray-blue accents.
Stage 4: Begin painting. Here I begin actually painting. I block in colors and build up forms using my value study as a guide.
Stage 5: Continue painting. Still painting, pulling out forms from the background, adding small details to the character, Still staying relatively loose and slopping around colors. By this stage the palette is complexly resolved and I can pick colors from the painting with the eyedropper tool in photoshop.
Stage 6: Adjustments and Final. I make final adjustments to shadow and form, making some elements more crispy and pushing some into the background with lost edges. I adjust the composition a bit, as I am unhappy with his legs pointing to the corner. This should have been resolved earlier, but thanks to the magic of Photoshop it is not a huge deal and I make the adjustment on the fly. I make some minor adjustments to his armor, resolve the stone head, then stick a fork in it, because it is done.
Hopefully this was helpful or at least interesting. I plan on doing more features like this in the future. I am working on some acrylic paintings right now so it might be interesting to compare the techniques (even thought the subject matter is completely different, so I wonder if it would make sense…)
Anyway, remember to check out my blog daily for new sketches, paintings, and features. And while you are at it, check out the other Dungeon Delve paintings in the ArtOrder Ning Forums.