Personal Project: Development of Skills Using Textured Brushes

Considering I have rarely used any sort of textured brush to create a full illustration I decided to create this character during the development of my Editorial module. I felt this would help me be more confident working with this style should I need it for my final creation considering the efficiency of my experiments so far and it would support my development into illustrating without the use of black outlines as well.

I used one of the photo references of my partner I had captured when asking him to recreate a variety of poses to use as reference for my illustration experiments, and although felt this position wouldn’t be appropriate for my Testuo illustration, felt it would work perfectly for a creepy, demonic concept due to the structure of the body.

I began by block colouring all of the separate areas using a midtone grey on Procreate which I then layered using a heavily textured brush with various tones in order to achieve the desired outcome. I then chose to add some soft false lighting as I felt this stark contrast would work to enhance the disturbing appearance of the character. Following this I also added some ‘fog’ to almost frame the design and make it appear more sinister to the audience, as if they had bumped into the creature on a late night walk underneath a cold moonlight.

One area I am not entirely impressed with however for lighting is the creatures tail, I feel I have incorporated far too much lighting on the top of the tail as although it is not directly behind the creature it would likely still be in shadow due to its positioning. Due to this I feel this area of lighting looks incorrect although I’m still impressed by my attempt at this way of working and would like to re-work this in the future.

I was unsure whether or not to incorporate any colour within the design, but I’m glad I chose to use the red to create the appearance of blood as I feel it further instils the theme of my illustration.

I really enjoyed working using this method of creating all of the areas separate so they could be individually shaded as I feel it allowed me to create some extremely interesting results. However I’m unsure how I would be able to achieve this on a larger scale given the current level of my skills, but I’m sure if I keep practicing I will be able to create a full environmental illustration using this style of brush in the future.