I know.. my girliest work ever! haha… Anyway, I’m just cleaning up my files and uploading old stuff. I did this around last february to march on and off a couple of weeks.
This was an overdue request for my good friend’s birthday. She just wanted me to paint an angel surrounded with roses. I believe the idea was sort of inspired by one of my first paintings but this time, it would have a happier and more updated look. Other than doing this as a request, I also wanted to challenge myself and create something as detailed and beautiful as the works of hjgart.
I first looked through photos of flowers and got inspired by the Lotus plant. It eventually ended up as the main peg for the costume and direction of this painting.
I recorded my long process just like before since I got tons of free space lying around: (3 parts!)
**************************************************************************
TIPS:
– Have lots of references. I had around 50+ different images I look at constantly while painting this. I had like images of chinese costumes, dolls, flowers, jewelry from all sorts of countries, etc. The hardest for me were the clothes and jewelry which were too unfamiliar.
– It’s very easy to unconsciously get too many similarities with other people’s artworks especially those you look up to. I am actually guilty of having a composition that is too similar to one of hgjart’s painting. Although it’s just minor, the subject matter is still very different. A good way to avoid this is by drawing your inspiration from other various sources instead, e.g., nature, photography, history, architecture, or even dreams, because this nurtures your creativity a lot more.
-Light elements on light elements can be contrasted by having complementary hues.
-Learn how to make brushes! Instead of painting each feather one by one, I just painted one and converted it to a brush and viola!
-Having separate layers for different elements is good for non destructive painting BUT too much and it slows you down. My usual main layers are just composed of the background layer, character layer, and the lighting effects layer. I easily got carried away here and rendered each jewelry on a separate layer. You always need to decide how to balance the time you would spend on your painting vs. it’s intended purpose.
**************************************************************************
Thanks for watching!
Did this in around 25hrs in total which is the longest time I’ve spent on a personal painting after soo long… XD I swear, if I used my normal workflow with less layers and looser strokes.. this would’ve taken a lot less time.
Also, I tried submitting this to ballistic publishing but unfortunately, I didn’t make the cut which means I have to make something even better!
Leave a Reply