kimsokol: kimsokol: New work for upcoming historical fantasy tabletop RPG Age of Aether! Gobli
kimsokol: kimsokol: New work for upcoming historical fantasy tabletop RPG Age of Aether! Goblins have longer arms in this setting, I swear I know how long an arm is. Hey @claudela , you ask I answer - and the answer is OH LORD NO I do not just start painting, oh my god I wish I could instead of banging my head against a dozen steps over the course of 20-odd hours. First it’s thumbnails - sometimes there’s a couple dozen, sometimes just a few, sometimes it’s stuff like this where I have a few to choose from and some more that I just straight-up deleted before finishing because they were bad. Absolute unskippable first step to figure out composition, TBH. I used to do these in a sketchbook, but I’ve been trying to work on my value structure so I’m doing them this way instead. Then I grab a bunch of reference, both photos and other peoples’ art, and try out some colour stuff. Then, once I’ve got client approval (and a tweak or two) on the comp, I shoot some deeply embarrassing reference photography… when I can I use a friend or hire a model, but this one is all me, my living room, and some empty D&D character sheets taped to the wall. Also need some clothing reference, in this case just a bunch of photos of Oliver Twist because that’s what the client asked for: …then take all that and do a final drawing with some final-ish colours to send to the client. Tell them that there’ll be other posters in there later, I swear. Think about how I’ve committed to a whole wall of wanted posters and wonder how the hell I’m gonna do that. Next step: start painting. Oh god, this is awful. I’m a joke. Why did anybody hire me I have forgotten how to do anything I am a menace to myself and those around me, I’m a sham of an artist. Don’t panic. (Okay, panic a bit, but then get over it.) Keep painting. Pay attention to the reference. Ask friends for critique. Redraw things that need redrawing. Focus on the big shapes. Draw some damn perspective lines instead of just eyeballing it. Think through the figure in 3D, where the light would actually hit. Work out the wanted posters in separate documents and warp them into place. Get a great paintover from a friend pointing out some places where the colours could use tweaking, stuff about the head angle and the hand pose, and that even for extra-long arms they’re probably too extra long. Paint and repaint over stuff I’ve done before. Get it working. Finish the background. Flatten the whole thing and paint over top to make it feel a bit more integrated, and make the wanted posters feel less sharp and pasted in. Final tweaks. Finally, a painting. Take a deep breath, send to the client, and desperately pray that they’re happy with it. For the actually-painting part, a lot of that just comes down to years and years of practice (I’ve been using Photoshop since I was 13, and that was 18 years ago) and for the brushwork - lots of experimentation, flat brushes with angle jitter set to pen tilt that allow some nice directional stuff, and master studies of oil painters to get an idea for how they do their brushwork. Also a lot of crying. I promise every amateur artist out there that professionals will gather together and go “OH GOD HOW DO I DO ANY OF THIS, WHY DO WE DO THIS, ART IS A CURSE” (and then get it out of our systems and remember that we do love our jobs a lot and we’re so lucky to have them, but art is still very hard, why do we do this.) -- source link