However the result still wasn’t good and I was really disappointed. The graphic novel look (or, if you prefer, comic look) I was aiming for wasn’t there. It looked like crap actually and I feel quite miserable about it. In the drawing process this is a critical point, you either drop your artwork and admit the defeat or continue the fight. I choose fight and throw heavy artillery…

Current test comp looks like this, although the colors are missing (yeah, it’s gonna be a color novel, so you can imagine the workload!):

Usually Selena doesn’t talk like that, but you can get an idea of her temper and attitude towards humans. And I can’t help myself but it appears as spagetti western instead of fantasy tale!

I’ve many paintings in my work in progress folder and here is a recent one. Princess Ameli from King’s Bounty videogame. Before you proceed keep in mind that it’s a w.i.p. and beware of the nudity (NSFW).

I have no problem with painting nudes, female body is just like an amazing landscape you’re exploring with brushes and paint. The only problem is that you need a life model or very good reference so you can capture all those anatomy issues. I always paint from imagination so it takes me a while to figure out a correct body structure and lighting.

For Ameli I wanted her to be a strong character (she’s a warrior princess after all) yet beautiful and attractive female. The picture you see has started as black and white pencil and paper sketch. I’ve scanned it into computer and painted in Photoshop. I sketched only her head and bits of shoulders and played with the rest digitally. Usually it takes me a few revisions until I find a good pose, lighting and color. I paint from color because it helps you to establish the mood but it’s tricky process so for newbie artists it’s easier to start with black and white values first (there are plenty of tutorials on that technique available online).

I don’t care about details at this stage, my main goal is to figure out the whole piece: composition, lighting, mood and color. I found Ameli’s body rather quickly but played a lot with background setting. Finally I ended up with something like a bathtub so here is some logic seing her nude. Proper background always helps to tell a story.

I spend about 5-6 hours on this (it’s safe to call it a sketch). The next stage would be refinement, fixing anatomy issues and painting some details here and there. It’s good to keep some spontaneous strokes and blobs from the original sketch, it makes your painting alive and less stiff. Final product is always a balance between highly polished stuff and dynamic, less refined areas.