Challenge #51: The Falconer

[yhlee]

Title: The Falconer
Artist: yhlee
Rating: G
Fandom: Original Work
Characters/Pairings: The Falconer (I haven't given them a name yet)
Content Notes: I wanted to try a science fantasy Asian character portrait in Procreate and mess about with a Venetian-inspired mask.

Preview:



Art & process notes behind cut.



The actual piece!



Initial sketch - the mask and the figure are on separate layers so I could mess around with one without destroying the other. Separate colors are just to make them easy to process in my head.

So, remember the terribad series of watercolor sketches I did a while back around "fake Venetian masks"? Turns out it wasn't a waste of time after all.

I referenced Gold Belle Epoque for the mask in this piece, although I took a lot of liberties. Just browsing through Original Venice Shop is inspirational.



The final version of the color test. I messed around A LOT trying to find a color scheme that worked. So, I own that brown as a clothing color is one of my least favorite colors (my mom used to dress me in browns and beiges, UGH) and, left to my own devices, I would paint in red/gold/black/purple FOREVER, but c'mon, I have to branch out. Also, the character came into my head as the Falconer and I don't think falcons are purple. (Are they?)

I start playing with very very basic lighting as well because I realized a gold mask on tawny skin was going to...not be visible AT ALL unless I managed the lighting situation better. I also ended up going with a more desaturated tan for the face so that the saturated gold tones would "pop" more. And I ended up with bits of green as an accent color partly for the "cyber" factor (glowy light green reads "cyberpunk" to me, but maybe I'm weird) because I wanted to give this a science fantasy feel, and I was going to DIE of boredom if the whole thing was browns except the hair. (SORRY IF YOU LIKE BROWN, it's not you it's me.)



Starter lineart, which I clean up a bit as I go. I love Procreate's Inka brush - it has just the right amount of jagged roughness and character to it. I have seen BEAUTIFUL art with technical pen controlled lines but I want WILDNESS in my own work.

Also, you'll notice in the final piece that some of the lineart is tinted in various places - swear to God reading a tutorial by Tran Nguyen in an Imagine FX issue where she mentioned "keep colored lines instead of just black ones in mind as an option" was life-changing. Look, I am ROCK STONE STUPID at art. I need things explained to me in words of one syllable for them to stick. :p



Flat colors - I ended up separating the skin tones, hair/clothes, and mask so that shading would be less of a PITA. Sometimes if there's complicated braid (HI JEDAO), that goes on a layer of its own.



Here's the piece partway through the render - I've done a first pass here on the figure (face, hair, clothes in separate stages) but haven't yet touched the mask or background.

I added the fourth chain later. XD

Comments

[yhlee]

Thank you! :D