cameronstewart

Over in the Fan Art group, Errante asked what my method was for making these drawings so I figured I'd show a step-by-step process. Here's how I made this portrait of Noidd:

First I choose a photograph that catches my interest in some way - this can either be because of interesting shapes in the figure, or because I'm interested in a challenge it poses because of lighting or expression, or often simply because I think the model is pretty.

EDIT: The picture is too large, click here

I start by doing a light, fast "pencil" drawing (I work digitally so it's not actually pencil) to rough in the basic shapes.



After the sketch is complete, I "ink" the drawing. I'm not interested in creating an exact replica of the photo so it's here where I stylize the figure, round out shapes, tweak proportions to be more pleasing for the drawing.



The first step in the colour stage is to put down a flat base colour. For flesh tones I usually use a shade of orange as my base.



Referring to the photo again, I quickly lay down blobs of colour to define the areas of light and shadow.



Then I go in and refine the colour, smoothing out the rough shapes and adding detail and definition to the forms.





Once the figure is complete I put in a background colour, using a variety of custom paintbrush textures I have saved.



The last stage is to selectively colour the linework to soften it and add some final definition to the figure, tweak the colours to make them more vibrant if necessary, add some subtle lighting effects, et voila:



And that's how it's done!