This one was very silly and self-indulgent but a lot of fun. As I was finishing up I used the sparkle brush on a whim and it fit incredibly well.
So I wanted to do a pinup of a man, and I really love this piece by Sabs. I also was interested in trying out the new process InCase has been talking about. Basically, you color beneath a cleaned-up sketch, and once you get to a certain point, you merge the layers together, paint on that, and then add in the linework on top. I think that was actually pretty good, but I'm not yet good enough at painting to make it work really well.
I also sketched this out on paper a couple of times before taking a picture, putting it in Clip Studio, modifying that sketch, and starting on top of that. I think that worked great.
Takeaways from this piece:
- A lot of the anatomy here is fudged, particularly the pelvis and chest. Surprisingly, the hands and feet are OK. Very happy with the legs.
- When starting to paint, throw in some hue variation. The colors get cooler as you go down the figure, which I think worked out well here.
- Rim lighting as your primary light source makes your life very difficult because it puts the rest of your subject in shadow, forcing you to eliminate detail. I found that too difficult so I ended up lighting the figure from in front slightly as well.
- I can't draw non-twink male bodies. This guy isn't just a twink, he's exceptionally skinny. I think he's drawn pretty well, but I need to practice other types of bodies.
- This one makes me so mad: I accidentally set the canvas size to 2000x2000 when sketching and forgot to change it back. This makes all the small details have little jagged edges and there's really no simple fix for this as far as I know. Grrr!
- For whatever reason, I have a lot of trouble drawing pecs unless they're front-on and fairly muscular. This makes the ribcage look flat instead of curved.
- Rendering! AGHHHH! It's fun but hard! I want to focus more on a more graphic style for now.
I was flipping through my sketchbook yesterday and was struck by how good my drawings were when I was doing more serious studying instead of focusing on making finished illustrations. I think I'll take the next few months off from trying to do these weekly paintings and study instead.
