Comics Commentaries

This week's post is coming a little bit early and I am headed out of town for the next week or so.
I didn't want to leave you guys without a post for the week. So this week I decided to take a bit of a break from the Nintendo book and try something different. I don't normally do superheroes (although I love them)..but since everyone else does it I like to be different. However, in the spirit of doing different things, I decided to try and paint over someone else's lines, which turned out to be pretty awesome.
I have been following this guy and Deviant art for a while (http://weaponx5203.deviantart.com/).
One day I asked him if I could pick something from his gallery and paint over the work.

He said "sure" and below is what I got:

Here are the steps to get to the end result:

1. Below: I picked the sketch of Rogue from the gallery it was the one with the cleanest lines and I was a fan of the sketch. I heard a lot that the key to a great painting is the sketch and the drawing underneath and it's really true. If you have a crappy drawing no amount of painting over it is going to fix it. See the sketch below:

2: Below: then I added a background gradient to set up the color tone of the painting:

3: Below: One tip that I picked up is before you start laying down any permanent lines, you should do some color tests. This means that you can try different color schemes and see which one works the best. Even different color backgrounds as well. In this case I kept the background green because it goes nicely with the yellow in Rogue's costume.

4: Below: I start to add color flats and the shadows and I make the decision that the light should be coming from the top right side of the image.

5. Below: One tip that I learned that also helps was to use a wireframe form lines to try and define the shape. This helps to keep the image from being flat, helps to define the form and helps when adding shadow and defining the form.

6. Below: Shadows added

7. Below I start to go over the lines and do the paintover. I will usually leave the light source indicator in place to serve as a reminder as I work.