Process work for a digital painting

The goal of the project was to adapt a figure drawing into a storytelling illustraion.

Step 1: The drawing

Here is the drawing I chose (from a group of my 5 best at the time). Unfortunately all the best storytelling poses that models will do tend to be short ones (2 minutes or less). More unfortunately I still had been struggling a lot with figure drawing so the list of 'good' drawings was a short one.

 Step 2: Fixing what's broke

 Once I had decided on a drawing I had to make sure everything was working anatomically. The drawing was scanned into photoshop and drawn all over.

Step 3: The Underdrawing

 On top of all of that is the underdrawing upon which my painting would have gone. I couldn't figure out a good, simple, straightforward story that could be told with this pose so it was modified.

Step 4: More fixifying

Making the figure stand left more room for my brain to think of stories. The model was sitting in a kind of contrapassto so it was relatively easy to adapt into a convincing standing position. I threw the knee up because I felt like she had a little captain in her.

Step 5: The story(ies)

We were tasked with making 5 story ideas with the pose, place the figure in a setting and create lighting (keeping it monochromatic, for simplification). I sat and brainstormed some quick and dirty stories and jumped onto the internet to find some photos that I could cheat in for setting. That also turned out to be a great tool for figuring out the lighting.

Step 6: Color Comps

We then had to pick out the ideas to take to color comps. I liked the sniper, but more importantly, so did everyone else I showed it to (as an artist going to the entertainment industry I had better get used to making stuff that everyone else wants to see).

The Final(ish) step: To finish

This was such a huge learning experience for me it is hard to sum up what the process was on this. As soon as my brain has had more time to digest everything I will get to writing it down.

I can not sufficiently thank my partner in class, along with my instructor the TA and the rest of my classmates. This really was a team effort and I don't know if I would have been able to get this quality without all the help from everyone.