Hart Illustration

The Demon at Greystone (progress shots)

Hey guys! It's been awhile since I've posted any art. I recently decided Malory needed a portrait upgrade, so this is what I've been working on. 

I didn't take as many in-progress screenshots as I thought I did, but here's some of my process anyway.

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1) The first step is always the sketch!

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2) Usually my style doesn't involve that much linework but I think having cleaner lines helps out in general. 

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3) Started with a layer of flat color for the skin and then some subtler shading. I like to start with lighter colors and gradually build up to darker colors.

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4) Here I started building up the darker parts of the face as well as the highlights.

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5) IDK how I managed to forget to get a screenshot of the hair before I started shading it but... it's fine. The hair is one layer with a midtone purple and then I started adding darker colors in a new layer. Both his hair and his horns are supposed to be black, but I usually avoid using pure black because it looks flat, hence why they're both purple and blue. I also darkened the whole picture here.

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6) I started working on some details here. I'm planning out his jewelry and added some highlights to his eye and the horns. His scarf is just some linework because I really didn't want to color or shade it haha.

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7) Started messing with some details and highlights here. Not all of these changes made it into the final cut, but I'm pretty happy with how the left eye came out.

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8) Like always, I transferred the picture to GIMP for the finishing touches. I modified the contrast, smoothed out some stuff and added a texture on top to arrive at the finished picture. Since you scrolled down this far, here's some close-ups