Due to my schedule, this project will be a rapid creation. I was just able to get started on research today, and I plan to finish it Sunday/Monday, as I won't have any time the week leading up to the actual due date.
I was excited for this project as it has been a while since I've done a completed work digitally. I mostly use digital tools for creating mock ups and refrences, but I actually started my art journey working digitially in March of 2020! I worked in Procreate, then wanted to move into animation, so I invested in ToonBoom and photoshop shortly before 2022. I then started focusing more on background and concept art, still somewhere in the animation realm. Because I had to go back to in-person school, I picked up traditional art so I could draw in class. Whoops. Now here we are.
I'll get into the symbolism/ties to the assignment later, for now here is my process for prepping references and research!
Research:
One of my favourite artists for quite some time now is Devin Elle Kurtz. When I was beginning with concept art her work and photoshop tutorials was a huge inspiration and helped significantly. She's been a background painter/designer for many many TV shows and you might recognize some of her commercial work:
So yeah, a lot of her work is super cool!
Here is her website: https://www.devinellekurtz.com/
I enjoyed the idea of "magical realism" where creatures dwelled in normal 'human' spaces. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do. Here was the intial sketch.
Confusing for now, but stick with me here. I wanted to draw a dragon on a skyscraper, being reflected in building windows.
First I wanted to design the dragon. So I listed anything "dragon like" and worked from there.
I pasted references into the document. I thought it would be fun to work with a leopard gecko, a great eared nightjar, and/or a leafy sea dragon. To narrow down my scope, I did some gestural sketch studies aiming to capture the main features.
I started to narrow down and combine these ideas. I wasn't too big into the leafy sea dragon for this, I felt combining it would be too much.
As you can see, I'm getting the feel for the character a bit more
Here I started sketching a bit more, working the design into the composition.
In case you're wondering about the various sketch colours, it's just so I can tell what is what without having everything on different layers.
Now I start roughly adding my values
I liked this, and added colour.
Once I've gotten a "painterly" view of what I'm trying to do, I photoshop my references more coherently.
This is a process called "photobashing." You combine a ton of images to make a new one, in combonation with other digital art elements. Think of it like a collage with extra steps and filters.
Mine looks bad. But it works!
It lines up with my sketch pretty well!
Everything looks disjointed still. So, I put a few overlay filters so it's a bit more coherent.
Perfect. This looks horrendous, but it will be useful.
If I was working traditional art, I would stop here and use this as a reference.
I can also do more useful things with this!
Above, I put a lighten and darken layer (one enabled at a time) with a neutral grey (exactly at 50%). This allows me to isolate the lightest and darkest parts of the work, and see the distribution of the values.
I also anonntate my work with any changes that need to be made or noted in the final version.
Now I start painting. This is what my set up looks like! I put screenshots of my work on a seperate document and pop it out. When I have it as a photoshop document, I can still colour pick & draw on top of the references. I can also zoom in and out, as well as collage the works.
Now I just... start? There isn't a lot to this part. I use a limited amount of layers from here on out (reference photoshop + planning was around 30-40, I'm estimating around 10-20)
I use default brushes I've customized with the mixer brush tool.
Here is the progress so far. I'll keep updating as it progresses.
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