June MOTM: What lurks in the deep woods - painting process // nsfw

here's the process pack for june's motm painting(s) - access it by downloading the attached .zip, containing 18 pngs and 1 gif!

so my original plan here was to make a set of relatively simple drawings, like a mini-comic, much like february's rainbringer art ... but then i ended up turning each panel into a painting in its own right. not gonna lie, i spent more time on painting these than perhaps i should have, given how much i currently have on my plate--but it was well worth it.

in the design commentary, i talked about how the art of john bauer was a source of inspiration for both the monster design and these paintings. i knew i wanted to do a very bauer-esque forest background, use a bauer kind of colour palette, and do the bauer thing of contrasting a big and rough-looking monster/a dark and murky background with a pale and delicate character that seems to have an otherwordly faerie light about them. 

in other words i had the colour scheme and background figured out from the get-go, so step one was to draw some rough pose ideas. i then refined the sketches, figuring out the details, and drew the lineart. the linework is relatively imprecise, i used a rather big brush, and didn't add too much detail except for the fur texture, because i knew i wanted the final picture to look relatively painterly and not too 'confined' by a super precise and exact lineart. for this reason i lowered the transparency of the lineart, set the layer to 'multiply,' and changed the colour from black to brown. this way the lineart functions more as guidelines--first i colour beneath the lineart layer, and then when it's time to add details and refine the painting i move to working on layers on top of the lineart.

but i'm getting ahead of myself. first of all i established the basic colours of the background, so that i'd know what kind of backdrop the characters would be have to fit into in terms of colour, lighting, and overall mood. the background would be a very important part in these paintings, both for setting the stage, create the folklory deep woods atmosphere, and direct the colour palette. like in many bauer paintings i used very dark hues for the furthest away parts of the background, really establishing that dark, deep forest vibe, while using softer greens for the mossy foreground. 

i then coloured in the flats for each character, on four different layers--one for the entirety of the wood lurker, and one each for the lady's skin, dress, and hair. locking the transparency of these layers allowed me to easily work on one area at a time. i went on to add the many shifting hues and gradients of the wood lurker's body and outfit, and that was the only point in this process that i used the lasso select + airbrush method. i made sure to work on all panels at the same time, ensuring that the colouring style and hues used remained consistent in each separate image. 

the biggest challenge with these paintings was that i wanted the wood lurker to have a murky colour scheme but i also wanted the background to be quite dark. it quickly turned out it wouldn't work out so well--at step 09 he's virtually disappearing into the background. i could have made the background brighter, but that would make the forest look less deep and mysterious, so i opted to use lighter hues for the wood lurker instead.

after adding some shadows and lighting to the lady's skin, i started detailing her lover. i used a variety of textured brushes of different shapes and sizes, and paid extra attention to the long tufts of fur on his body, while at the same time being careful not to overburden other parts of him with too much messy detail. as for the lady i focused on detailing her hair, and coloured her skin in a sort of painterly way. i went back to work more on the background, starting to add detail and texture and also making it quite a bit darker, while also brightening the wood lurker's head and neck up a bit, which immediately made him easier to discern. 

at this point i started working on layers on top of the lineart, as mentioned above; i added more detail and texture, refining the outlines and cleaning things up. adding the shiny flowers (inspired by windflowers and starflowers) made a huge difference in terms of folklory atmosphere, as did adding a subtle ethereal light to the lady, making her look like one of the faeries in bauer's paintings.

at the same time i also brightened up the wood lurker even more, meaning his colour scheme didn't turn out nearly as dark as i had originally planned, but it was necessary to make him stand out against the background and make the paintings easier to read. i further differentiated certain parts of the characters from one another by adding subtle contrasting pale overlays and darker gradients--for example i made his arms somewhat brighter, while making his torso and hip somewhat darker. finally i framed each panel, flipped some of them horisontally just to switch things up, and resized them as necessary so that i could fit them all into a neat square.

i love painting atmospheric forest scenes like these, and though it was a bit of a struggle at times, trying to balance the relative darkness and brightness of different parts of the image, i'm terribly happy with the final pieces. 

// art + characters © me.