Com_Chill

 

An icy commission.

Also! I recorded a video of me painting the eyes:


The music in the video was made available by the artist here. Trippy stuff!

While painting this guy, I listened to the Big Illustration Party Time Podcast, which is an incredible resource of inspiration and knowledge that I cannot recommend highly enough. If you do freelance illustration or comics, you really, really should listen to them. They manage to cover a lot of businessy topics without ever drifting into monotony.

The episodes on contracts, copyright, payment, and all the non-arty parts of art are especially important to listen to in addition to the usual important subjects of portfolio arrangement and all that. They revamped their site, so a ton of the archives aren't on the site yet, so you have to subscribe through iTunes to get all the episodes, but it's well worth it. Listen while you work!

Anyway, for more process (in addition to the video) I as always keep close track of the updated versions of the art I send to clients, so we consequently also have a nice little process gallery to look through, too.

You can see the Photoshop paints without the pencils at top, and the paints themselves look pretty close to a finished portrait, actually, but for now I still cling to traditional pencils, for the most part, as my security blanket. I like working traditionally and lament the pressure to go totally digital.

The other shot is the shaded lines, and below that are the pure pencil lines. And that's how we make a portrait (and mangle grammar). I really like seeing process stuff, so hopefully this was enjoyable.

I'm going to be uploading some more process videos I recorded, including a hair-painting demo and a digital inking demo, so there's at least two more process videos coming up, plus a super secret project I'm excited about. But more on that later!

Reuxben