The last lip balm label illustration preview, Faun Song will be vanilla flavored. :)
This started out as a 30 second gesture doodle. I then grabbed a handful of textures off Mayang and just… fiddled with everything until it looked ok. It was a super fun approach, though maybe not the most reliable haha.
Just fiddling around in photoshop. Sheep are on the long list of animals I think are adorable but don’t draw much for some strange reason.
Bill Sanchez is a MAGNIFICENT teacher (that I was lucky enough to study under while at the academy) and an even better artist. I am SO STOKED to see he has a tumblr, you guys have no idea!!
Chris Lutes writes:
Bill Sanchez is a legendary drawing and illustration instructor from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. He studied and taught with famed illustrator Barbara Bradley and worked as a commercial illustrator and storyboard artist all through the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Since most of his output was storyboards not much of it saw the light of day so he has remained relatively unknown outside of the classroom. A book of his art is in the works but until then he has a Tumblr so people outside the Academy get to see some of his beautiful drawings and rough color studies.
Jean Giraud, or perhaps more widely known as Moebius in this country, was an extremely large influence on my art. I first became aware of him through the Panzer Dragoon series, which remains one my my favorite series to date in large part to the incredibly unique aesthetic that has yet to be matched by other games.
Elysion Age looks the way it does because of him and his art. The mancers and the airships especially were done with his work in mind.
I was very sorry to hear that he passed.
There has been so much beautiful tribute work done, and I wanted to contribute to that. I went with Rin, because of the massive impact that Moebius ended up having on Elysion Age. It just felt right, I guess.
Since people seem to be interested, here’s another process post!
1. The sketch, scribbled out in a carmine col-erase pencil.
2. Using a light table, I create the line art based on the sketch, fixing things here and there. I then lay down simple washes with watercolor (cheap stuff that comes out of a tube that I got at a japanese dollar store) to establish the underpainting.
3. Here I loosely paint in the background, and add deeper values and detail to the figure.
4. I went in with copic markers at this step to tighten up the rendering in his face. I also deepened the colors in his cloak, cleaned up the edges and added details. I then used a white gel pen to create highlights to pull focal point.
5. I’ve been very inspired lately by artists like Cory Godbey, Justin Gerard, and my husband who do a brilliant job of mixing traditional and digital media. So at this point I scanned the piece and brought it into photoshop. I spent a while experimenting with all sorts of textures and effects layers.
Ta-da!
Here is the orange tabby sphinx, from start to finish!
1. The sketch! This was actually done in a red col-erase pencil, I just scanned it in black and white. I made it the size I wanted to work with on the computer and printed it out.
2. Here’s the clean line art, done with a sienna brown prismacolor pencil. I drew it onto Arches hot press watercolor paper with the help of the original sketch and a light table.
3. At this point I lay in my shadows with watercolor. I’m using a cheap japanese brand I got for about a dollar a tube at Daiso, a japanese dollar store that’s around my area.
4. And now the background. I kept it quick and simple, I wanted it to push the character forward rather than draw attention away.
5. A larger step here, I paint in the local colors for the character and then wait for it to dry juuust a little bit. Then I painted in her markings. I didn’t do it right away, as the stripes would just end up bleeding out. But waiting for it to dry completely would mean harder edges on the stripes than I would like, making them come forward to harshly. This way they blend gently at the edges.
6. The finished piece. I made touchups with prismacolor pencils here and there. I strengthened the line art a bit more and added temperature changes to the lines using sienna brown, violet, and tuscan red. I also went in and touched up the shadows of her hair and body with the violet pencil, and added some texture to the sky with lilac and deco blue.
…And that was my process for this piece! :D
