Pose Paint Study
I wanted to display a more traditional approach to painting, having my reference side to side by my canvas. Likewise, I wanted to do a project that had no sketching or line art, something that leans heavily into my abilities with digital painting. Going off of reference (I got it off of a cosplayer’s twitter account, @nato_mitsu), I blocked in the shape along with the local values I’d be using later. I added in background colors as well to provide variation between the subject and her surroundings in order to make the composition more visually appealing.
I continued to add in more specific tones in for later blending. I needed to keep in mind the large range of values I needed to work with, since the lighting is strong and coming from a backlit angle along with the material of the clothing itself being very reflective.
I had a lot of fun painting in the hair and playing around with the sort of glow it has. I wanted to utilize the entire range of monochrome values, so there are places within the piece that utilize nearly pure white, like in the hair, and nearly full black, like the shadowed portions of the torso.
I finished up the painting of the figure, and I spent a lot of time on the details of the face. Given the face lies somewhere between the lightest and darkest values, I felt the eye would be drawn there. Of course, given that the subject has a human face, that too would influence the focal point of the painting. I made sure to add in the shading for the rest of the body before I moved on to the face, since I knew it would be the most difficult part.
