I think for the first time I'm making a blog post about a painting I made on the same day. Usually I procrastinate when it comes to making blog posts, but not today. I finished this painting couple of hours back & now posting it here.
This design is based on Cyclops from Uncanny X-Men comic series. I made the initial sketch last year, and took it out to paint today. I was also trying a new painting technique and I like the way it turned out.
Edit: I just realized that I uploaded a flip side image of this on Facebook & Instagram. Shit. Anyway, here's the original image, and this is how its supposed to be.
I have made this painting a while back, but I was too lazy to make a blog post about it. I still am. Actually, I don't know if I'm lazy or just too busy with multiple things that I'm trying to do at the moment. Either way, it doesn't matter. I decided to write this post, while I figure out today's plan in the back of my mind. I'm not thinking too much about what I'm typing. A byproduct of not sleeping the whole night. Anyway, I'll get right into the post.
This painting is based on a poster of Doctor Strange movie. Actually it's not a poster. It's one of the first images that was officially released by Marvel. Just google 'Doctor Strange' and you'll find profile shot of Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange outfit. I liked the silhouette of his face. I decided to make few drawings to see if there's a possibility of a painting. Here they're:
The first sketch didn't feel right. So I tried to push the design and make it as simple as possible and I really liked what I did in the second sketch. So I decided to go with it. Actually this is one of those images I drew long back, left it aside, and one day decided to make a painting out of it. So I brought it into Photoshop and refine the design and figure out all details. I like doing clean line art before I start painting because I don't have to worry about various details or contours and just focus on painting. But lately I'm finding that process very time consuming. I have to learn to paint without clean line art. Here's the line art of the painting:
After doing the line art I left it aside and got back to it several days later. Rather than painting just the character, I wanted to have some kind of background. If you want to paint a whole image rather than just a character, it helps to have some kind of background. So I painted this as my background for this painting:
The process of painting character is pretty straightforward. I start with choosing local colors(solid base colors when not affected by light), then I add shadows, followed by highlights, and then any special light effects if necessary. Here's the final result:
As always, I see areas I could improve on. But I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. Hope you like it as well. :)
My first blog post!!! And I choose you, Hawkeye. Sounds like I'm choosing a Poke'mon. Anyway, I made this painting roughly around two months back. But the origins of this painting started more than an year ago. I had an idea for an animated short featuring Hawkeye. So I decided to do some sketches while watching the first Avengers film. Basically I was trying to stylize the pose and character, and finding a design that is suitable for animation. These are some of the sketches I did back then...
I did quite a lot of sketches and these are some of them. I always do my sketching traditionally using a 2B pencil and normal printer paper or any sketchbook. Sketching traditionally feels more natural to me, so I prefer drawing this way when I'm trying to figure out the design.
But I decided not to make the animation because it's very time consuming. And spending a lot of time and energy into a fan animation didn't feel like the right thing to do. So I dropped the idea and after an year later, when I'm making some paintings, I decided to use some of my favorite sketches from this lot. Initially I chose 5 poses, but it was taking too much time, so I picked just this one...
Then I took this image into Photoshop, cleaned it up, added colors, and several hours later it all turned into this.
Actually, this is not the final image. This image has some perspective mistakes. And the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on his shirt is also missing. I corrected all those mistakes but I forgot to save it, and somehow I lost it. It was a long day and I decided to just go ahead and post this version. Either way, I'm happy with the way it is. :)
