Making of Grenat by Karin Y. Schmitt,Brazil Web: www.karin.br.ms

APPLY EARLY DETAILS

Once the basic and solid shapes are drawn, I feel more secure to put additional information’s. In this step, I began to define her face, hands, hair and eagle’s feathers, taking care about lightning’s and shadows, which are crucial to give the volume shape. I also start sketching other secondary subjects, e.g. her brooch as well as jacket’s and jewels’ design.

About face and hands, I usually paint them with a hard round edge brush and, to blend colors better, I set its opacity to 10-20% and its spacing to 25%, always using the drop tool and the original palette to avoid problems with color’s homogeneity.

As for hair and feathers, the process is almost the same in both of the cases: they can be done with a dotted custom brush, setting its spacing to 1% besides checking Shape Dynamics and Pen Pressure options.

ARRANGING THE LOOK

At this point, the final result became clearer to me and I thought some repairs were necessary before proceeding. First step, her anatomy: I reduced the woman’s head to about 90% of the original size and brought it more to the right; the same was done with the hands and her thigh, which were, respectively, wrongly big and small according to the right body proportions.

Second step, the eagle: I decided to not change its size then I only
took it closer to the woman.

look

A SHADOWY THOUGHT AND A FOCUS CHANGE

Taking a look at the picture I have done so far, I starting realize it wasn’t checking with the theme I was trying to propose: it supposed to be something drifting to darkness and uncanniness, as the idea of “bloody war” is, and the current portrait I had in my hands wasn’t, unfortunately, transmitting that. The solution I saw for this was to change the source of lighting, putting a shadow on the eagle’s and woman’s right side and, to complete the mood, a red eye and some veins in her face besides a sword being held by her hand.

focus change

At this step, elements like feathers and hair were being more and more defined so I decided it was time to start working the other parts as well: Accessories, Clothing and Environment (ACE). Think about – and paint – these three words is one of my greatest difficulties. Isn’t rare to find myself spending more time than I have to decide what style and design should I opt for. Therefore, in my case, some references – found through Google – are very important and necessary to do it the rightest way I can:

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