Red Dragon
Creation process from pencil drawing to finished painting
Creation process from pencil drawing to finished painting
This drawing will be part of the Fantasy book for children I am currently writing. Here you see the end result and the steps I went through to create it.
First I start with a pencil drawing with black outlines. Then, using a lightbox (so the black outlines shines through on the empty paper I place on top of it) I draw the grayscales and the highlights. Since I am using a black pencil, the highlights will be inverted (white is black). The trick while drawing the highlights is to imagine in advance where the light will fall on the finished image. You need to be able to imagine the head as if it were a three dimensional sculpture (with light falling on it) to pull this off.
The following three images are the three pencil layers: black outlines, grey shadows and white lights (inverted).
Let's see what we get when be bring these three layers together on a grey background in a design program on PC. First I make the white of each layer disappear by using an alpha filter. Given the fact that the highlights are still in black, the image isn't what it's supposed to be for the moment as shown here below.
When I invert the highlights layer, as shown here below, suddenly it makes more sense.
Then I lock the pencil layers and start to use colours underneath these layers. That way I can happily start to "paint" the image without accidentally moving the pencil layers. For an optimal result I will start to play around a bit with the blend modes of these pencil layers as soon as I start to add colours. Normally the blend mode I use for the pencil layers is 'overlay' but as this tends to fade out the black outline layer a bit too much, I will often add a semi transparent copy of those outlines directly underneath.
To add the colours I use Fireworks. It's normally meant to be used by designers for the creation of website designs and App designs, but I will take advantage if its vector based workflow to easily manipulate the shapes, feather ratios, gradients and colours of the different objects that I will add to bring colour to the image. Because of its intuitive interface and fast workflow Fireworks gets me to an end result much faster than Photoshop, but it has memory issues when working in large sizes, so I have to make backups on a regular basis.
The following images show some of the steps of adding the colours. Each coloured shape is a vector object, even the large shadows with faded (feathered) edges. Since Fireworks gives me huge control over vector objects and allows me to apply effects and complex gradients to them as if they were bitmaps, I can always make changes fast and easily, even after the "painting" is completely finished.
Notice that the white layer (highlights) immediately adopts the colour underneath, becoming a lighter percentage of that colour. This is because of the blend mode I used on the white layer.
Once the base colour vectors are placed, I start to add smaller details, such as additional smaller shadows (feathered vector objects) and additional small highlights. While I do this I continue to play around with the blend modes of these objects. The interaction between them and the colours underneath sometimes creates unexpected shades of colour that add a bit of flavour.
Let's add the colours of the teeth now. Their yellow colour was a dissonant, so I decided to add an additional vector object over them to change their colour hue and bring them more in harmony with the rest of the image.
Then I added a background. The background is built up of vectors with gradients and large feathered edges with different overlayers of scribbled pencil lines in different blend modes. These are not very visible on the small image here below but maybe you can still sense the subtle nuances they add to the background.
And of course, given the fact that all the colours were added using vectors, I can now easily group them according to colour, change their colour in the blink of an eye and export the dragon in a zillion different psychedelic colour schemes if I wanted. Here's one where I only changed the base colours of the horns and the skin around the eyes and inside the mouth.
Finally, let's look at a few close ups. Notice how the greyscale and highlight pencil layers have changed colours because of the blend modes I used. This gives the impression as if each pencil line was painted with a very fine brush or with a coloured pastel pencil. It's a "laboriously looking" effect you would normally only get by painstakingly adding each of these lines by hand in their different colours.
That's it. Hope you enjoyed this "semi-tutorial". If you'd like to see more or find out about my webdesign and app design activities (Illustration isn't my main professional activity, in fact), please visit www.foob.be.
I end with a word to fans of Fantasy art: if you'd like to own a print, poster or post card of this red dragon illustration, I have uploaded it to Artflakes. This is my page: http://www.artflakes.com/en/shop/foob
See ya !
Ah yes, and don't forget to share your thoughts at the bottom of this page.
