Orphan character portrait for first conception of current graphic novel project. Pencils and inks.
Tag Archives: process
Character Portrait No. 3
Orphan character portrait for first conception of current graphic novel project. Pencils and inks.
Character Portrait No. 2
Orphan character portrait for first conception of current graphic novel project. Pencils and inks. 
Character Portrait No. 1
I’ve been commissioned to illustrate a graphic novel. The project should keep me busy until the end of this year. Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be posting some early designs of the principal characters of the version of the story that I’m not illustrating. The project’s writer scripted the first chapter. I did character designs and then had to do some traveling. While I was gone the writer was inspired to script a completely different story for his own amusement.
Both he and I decided that the new story would be a lot more fun to work on than the original concept. So all these character designs are now orphans.
Silurian: Step Five
I’m not as good a colorist as I’d like to be. I have a hard time knowing how to balance colors. Color is a tool and one of the best ways to learn how to use to tools is to restrict the uses of them. For this illustration, I decided to stick with just purple (for the shadows of the cave) and yellow (for whatever the light source is).
How does it look?
Silurian: Step Four
Contrast is an important part of any good illustration. Once I’d done my standard Photoshop adjustments, I worked on emphasizing the light source on the Silurian. If this piece were intended to be black and white, I’d stop here. Since I want the final piece to be color, I’ve got another step to take.
Silurian: Step Three
The next step, once I’ve got an ink and graphite version that I like, is to scan it into Photoshop. In Photoshop, I clean up the most errant pencil lines, add some layers, apply the gaussian blur tool and do some general tweeking.
Silurian: Step Two
Since a direct digital drawing of the Silurian isn’t something I wanted to attempt at the moment, I rendered a final version of the Silurian in ink with graphite shadings. I could just leave the illustration alone at this point but I’ve got other effects I like to add.
Silurian: Digital Digression
When I started to do this series of illustrations for my Morgo project I thought I might render them digitally. I’ve been practicing at doing direct digital illustrations. Looking at the results here, I decided that I still need more practice.
Silurian: Step One
In Morgo the Mighty, the Silurians are a race of scale-skinned humans who obey the commands of the evil Zorimi. I’ve got plans to adapt and illustrate Morgo but those plans are long term. I’ve got a lot of other projects to complete before I can dedicate much time to that. I can, in the meantime, do some development illustrations.
The image in today’s post is the base sketch for one of those illustrations.
