Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Dwarf Commission Process

Commissioner sent me a very detailed description of a dwarf character with a burning lava hand. I was scratching my head for a bit but he said he liked my first pass at the character so I got lucky.

Initial rough sketch
Made a few slight changes per request, such as redesigned hat and larger beard, and began to tighten up the line art slightly. Added a little fire elemental as well.

Revised sketch, rough background
At this point I'd usually jump to doing flat colors and then shading/rendering those layers, but I wanted the final piece to have more of a painted vs. comic book look, and I wanted to try something new, so I did the whole thing in grayscale before coloring.

final lines and gray scale
Jumped back and forth a lot between grays and colors after a while and had a real tough time getting the colors to balance. Not sure if I succeeded, but this is still probably one of the most elaborate things I've drawn. The pose is a little static, but I had a hard time figuring out how to include all the elements of the character's description without having him basically standing there on a rock. Commissioner was happy with the final piece, which was a relief.

final colors
I'd usually charge $35 for a piece like this ($20 for colored character + $10 background + $5 fire elemental), but I did it for $25 as part of a holiday price special. Now I'm back to drawing comics.

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