A step by step of "The Lost Ones"

I thought it would be fun to do a simple step by step process of how I go about painting. I personally enjoy looking at other artists' step by step process because I'm always able to learn something from them. It's also fun to see them bring their ideas to life. Anyways, I hope you enjoy! 

Step one: The sketch

This is were I set the scene up and get all my proportions, poses, outfits, hairstyles etc. the way I want them to be. 

 Step two: Blotching in colors and shades (aka the ugly stage)

I didn't take a screen shot but what I do before this, is paint all the base colors with no shading. After doing that I then go wild with creating "clipping masks" and start roughly fiddling with the shading (as you see above). Figure out the lighting early on is vital, as you can see above I used yellow and blue. I also begin roughly setting up the background. 

Step three: Blending!

After you've set everything up you can begin blending all of those ugly blotches and start smoothing out the skin and clothes. In this part I also added the eyes and lips for the female on the right. The photo on the bottom you can see how it looks when I start to blend the colors. 

Step four: Hair and more skin blending

Like skin I start off with blotching in the different hair shades, except I use a hair brush instead of a soft brush. I then smooth out the colors (still using a hair brush) and at the very end I add the highlights and smooth out the tips. On the second photo you can see how it looks after the tips have been smoothed out on the red haired female.

Step five: Clothes detail 

With the female on the left I blended the colors, added some texture and detail to her outfit.

Step six: Details

In this step I added eyelashes, eyebrows and skin texture!

Step seven: Background time!

Added clouds and fiddled with the color for awhile.

Step eight: More background 

I blended the colors more on the bottom and added some yellow lighting to it.

Step nine: Light rays and some minor details

I added the light rays with a soft brush (opacity set very low) and added a warming filter. After it was brought to my attention I changed the left female's hand a bit.

I don't remember how long this took me since I never keep track of time when I'm drawing, but it took me over 6hrs to complete. 

If you're interested you can check out my DeviantArt and Facebook for more updates and artwork. 

Completed art project

Even though midterms are officially over that doesn't quite mean my work is over. Nonetheless when class was over Friday I felt as if a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. My last midterm to turn in was an art project I had been working on for over a week (the images below). Granted it didn't take me seven straight days to finish (probably 10hrs) but as I've mentioned before this piece was actually very annoying due to its size. Being that I live in a very small apartment this piece didn't fit on my desk, and in order to color everything I had to keep rotating it and re positioning it while not bending the paper too much.  Even though it was troublesome it eventually was completed after watching many episodes of Star Trek and was rather pleased with it. 

The meaning to this piece is simple but is something I try to live by in my personal life. The female represents yourself and everything behind represents all the trouble and experiences we go through in life. The clocks are an obvious representation of time and the monsters are a representation of our demons or the terrible people/experiences we encounter in our time. These monsters or "demons" try to drag us down and keep us from looking forward and having a positive outlook on life. Whether we encounter disappointment,  death, hate, sorrow, guilt or any other of these dreadful feelings we have to be strong and keep moving. The female glancing back tells us that we mustn't forget our past, we just can't let it drag us down. I didn't take a full picture but in front of her there is about 3inches of white space, that represents the future and our ability to control our future. The other human heads represent the people we meet in our lives whether they be a beneficial influence or not, they make us who we are today. In conclusion I wanted this piece to tell people that life is never easy but we can be strong and  make the best out of it.

Before I forget the materials used were: Prisma color, Poster color (gold parts), Comic book ink (black lines/areas)

I hope everyone was able to enjoy their weekend! Cheers!

If you're interested you can check out my DeviantArt and Facebook for more updates and artwork.