Thank you very much again for another month of support, here is this month's Q&A!
If you would like to send in a question for next month, feel free to leave it below in the comments!
- Youtube link for those with Vimeo troubles
- Download video here&...
2021-06-21 23:54:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Recently I've been trying out a lot of slightly more vibrant colors, with lots of studio lighting setups experimenting with all kinds of effects! With this piece I wanted to quickly revisit a more dulled out and quiet palette with the good old greys and blues.
It was a bit tough figuring out how to get the straw coat to look right, I think I had to try for a balance between being too long and obscuring too much detail and fla...
When I originally did this piece in 2018, I remember I just intended for it to be a quick paint kind of deal, so it ended up a little sloppier than expected. I saw it recently so I took a little time to touch it up, it took surprisingly not too long at all as the composition itself was fine!
Hope you enjoy the change and thank you as always for the support!
This is actually quite a special piece as currently I'm working on a fairly large and comprehensive tutorial based on this artwork! I would love to hear any questions you have (can be short or long!) based on this piece (or in general) and hopefully I will be able to answer them as many of them as I can in long form via this tutorial project.
I hope the process steps can be helpful as they are, but would of course like t...
This was such an unexpectedly fun piece to draw! It started out with more of a mundane setting as I tried figuring out how to make things a bit more exciting, but it turns out fire was one effect I actually have never tried playing with yet. I don't think I've quite captured it very well in terms of detail, but I'm quite relieved the overall effect seems to be sufficient!
It was quite an interesting journey with a couple of tw...
Thank you guys so much for another month of support here! As promised, I will start putting up the full-res images of the entire Bad Guys series here on Patreon.
(No worries as this is not substituting any new works or process posts.)
Honestly when I drew these 4 images, I wasn't actually planning to create a series at all. It just felt a bit incomplete when I drew the first image and I feared everyone would think it o...
Thanks to everyone's excellent feedback and welcoming response to last month's real time lecture-style video, I felt comfortable doing one more to reinforce and show some direct applications of perspective in helping create the works you want to create.
In this video, I try to tackle the challenge of bridging together the concepts of camera focal lengths, distance to lens and camera placement with realistic application starti...
Continuing the fancy venue setting from the recent works! It was a bit tough figuring out the backdrop for this piece, but in the end I found a simple wall (with fancy wallpaper) worked well enough, especially how it reinforces the right to left lighting setup. I also found that red complemented the scene surprising well setting up a dimmer mood without compromising on impact.
As always, feel free to let me know what you th...
2021-05-26 05:57:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Thank you very much again for another month of support, here is this month's Q&A!
(Youtube link for those with vimeo troubles)
There is also a bonus texture brush that I like using very much attached below!
If you would like to send in a question for next month, feel free to leave it below in the comments. To limit the numbers, questions are ...
Started this piece with a pose in mind, but it turned out really challenging to try and create a proper setting to fit the character! Normally layering on more elements and details is a process I find quite straightforward, but the unusual setting made it a bit more challenging to flesh out the environment.
I hope you enjoy this image and find the process steps helpful as well! This month's Q&A video coming up soon, if yo...
A quick dip back into a type of subject matter I haven't touched in a while! It's still fun to draw some non-contemporary costumes and it's a nice pause from the usual bad guys stuff. It's been a while since doing this type of grey outdoor lighting in the snow so I actually took a bit to recall how to balance the values properly; I hope you enjoy the piece and find the process steps interesting!
As always, thank you for you...
2021-05-16 05:46:35 +0000 UTC View Post
This was a very satisfying piece to remaster, I liked the pose very much, but always thought there was something a bit off with the hair and face. I think I managed to fix it up a bit here and added some extra effects as well to compliment the wind in the hair!
Thank you very much as always for your support!
I had quite a lot of fun creating this piece ( https://www.patreon.com/posts/full-res-image-50485480 ) over here that I thought it would be nice to try another image with a similar composition. This type of mood and setting is still a little new to me so it was a little daunting to take it on! However I think the results aren't too bad and I...
2021-05-09 05:43:34 +0000 UTC View Post
This piece was quite a challenge (lots of difficult works recently!) as I tried to figure out a way to incorporate a color scheme I'm personally not very familiar with. Mix that in with trying to cast a shadow/ draw an important interaction onto a very foreshortened wall and you get quite a struggle in the end!
Still, I appreciate challenges and how they teach me new skills to use and pitfalls to avoid. And I always feel encou...
I really liked the semi-surreal feel of the deep red leaves in this 2017 piece, but always had an issue with the weird unidentified stone slope I put in for some reason. In this rework, I tried to make the surroundings a little more natural looking, and added an overhang for shelter so it made a bit more sense for the character to be sitting in the rain.
It's a fun, and also relaxing process to do these reworks in between new ...
In this month's video, I'm trying something a bit different with a real time format, talking and explaining in kind of a lecture-style video. I think perspective is a very good place to start with fundamentals and I felt it was worth a try to see it is helpful. I try to tackle a couple of things about perspective that I felt took a lot of figuring out (for me personally) and wasn't frequently presented online.
Thank you eve...
Usually I use a lot of perspective, lighting and composition tricks to draw my favorite poses and lighting setups, but this time I wanted to do a simpler kind of composition for a different type of impact and feel!
2021-04-26 06:09:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Final versions are now available for download!
I'm working on this month's tutorial video right now; it's going to be a little bit different from the 2 previous ones as I'm trying out a real-time style demo/tutorial on drawing and planning perspective, touching on a lot of nuances that don't seem to be commonly explored.
Thank you as always for supporting me!
Thank you again for another month of support, here is this month's Q&A!
(Youtube link for those with video troubles)
I think a lot of the questions you guys have been sending in are great, it's a bit of a shame that even in verbal form there is still a lot of nuances that I couldn't touch on given the time. In the end, I hope this is at...
It's been quite a while since I had to draw a proper full-scene that's generally well lit; it is actually surprisingly tough when a lot of the scene is in view and in focus. (and doesn't have the benefit of hiding in shadows) Perhaps it's just part and parcel of drawing such types of scenes, or maybe there is a better composition I could have found. I think these kind of questions make it really fun and exciting for me to continuousl...
2021-04-20 06:10:17 +0000 UTC View Post
I had quite a bit of fun (and it's also quite relaxing) remastering a piece from 2017 recently (https://www.patreon.com/posts/lotus-2021-2017-49605885), so I did this piece next as a break.
I wasn't ever quite satisfied with how I wrapped up this piece last time, especially with how the lighting on the face worked, so I gave it a q...
Trying out a new angle of view that I think looks cool. It's also always fun to do some rain again. :)
Let me know of any feedback for the process steps (too long, too short,etc) as always, thank you!
Sometimes doing a comfort-zone composition can be deceivingly easy at first. Despite the relatively static and straightforward overall presentation (no complex layering of elements, difficult camera angle), it actually took me a bit to figure out how exactly to show the "nuance" of the pose. At first the character felt too relaxed and the camera angle created a not-so-good silhouette, so I had to do some adjusting to make thing read ...
2021-04-09 05:54:32 +0000 UTC View Post
I came by this old work recently and spent a bit of time to repaint parts that looked a little off. It's a bit strange as your skills advance that old paintings can just look "wrong" in some areas, but back then it felt like I couldn't see any "mistakes" at all. I really liked the scene I came up with back then so I thought it could do with a bit of patching!
2021-04-04 06:12:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Quite a tough piece when it came to drawing characters and gesture in a close-up and dynamic perspective! Definitely need more experience and practice to get comfortable but I'm glad this piece turned out OK :) Thank you everyone for your support!
Note: Image has been updated since posting and process steps are up!
For this month's video, the focus is on the initial parts of the drawing process, from rough sketch, to full color draft ready for cleaning up. Hopefully this will be helpful as a lot of comments and questions from last month, pertained to this early part of the process!
Hope you will enjoy, and please feel free to leave me feedback here in the comments. Stuff like volume, pacing, length or even alternate topic suggestions are ...
2021-03-27 05:15:09 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a bonus/extra segment, the main tutorial video will be up tomorrow for all patrons!
These are some answers I have to a couple of frequently asked questions, plus a brush (download below) that I talk about in the video.
Hope this helps and feel free to leave more questions in the comments, thanks as always for supporting!
I actually had some unexpected challenges during this process adding color to the image, a lot of elements in frame actually doesn't have much local color so I had to deal with a very grey looking color sketch! Fortunately I think I did a passable job resolving that moving forwards into the lighting and painting stages, let me know what you think.
Video will be up soon as well, focused on the initial painting stage as a lot of...
