The first piece I've done in ages that I'm 100% happy with, I think. I tried a new method of coloring and played with new brush effects, and I'm putting what I learned from the process into the Swamp Run artwork I'm doing for Halloween.

I've also been working on gift designs for a few people.

With this piece I basically did the base painting from a sketch done in Mischief (exported to a huge PNG and opened in Corel Painter) in monochrome - a royal blue through white. I used my rough scratchy lineart brush, set to blend colors, and basically smeared/blended/painted the rough values together. I put a rough palette to the side of the colors I'd likely use. Then I made a new layer, set it to multiply, and slapped on some colors, switching from default to multiply modes to color pick for blending as necessary, until it looked sort of natural. Then I duplicated both layers (in case of boo boos), hid the originals, merged the copies, and began painting on top, alternating between a 'cover' brush and a blender brush. After another hour or two of painting and fidgeting I did a curves color adjustment, then made a new layer to paint specular highlights (the white dots of the eyes). Then I signed it with a color from the painting, saved a layered copy, saved a PNG copy. And then I fell in bed and passed out!

This piece WAS done with a reference - specifically I had created a character in Sims Medieval as Blazhe's counterpart and used that for reference. It helped a lot to break away from my 'default' features and really made rendering the eyes and shadows and nose SO much easier.

As always, the full file is available to patrons on Patreon.

art and character (c) to me