Drawing process: elf princess
Welcome to the drawing process of my newest illustration: Elf Princess!
In the illustration, an elf princess is staring out the window with a kind of unreadable expression. I imagine that living around the palace, she has learned to keep her emotions concealed. I also think she might be slightly bored. The hallways behind her are empty, adding to that sense of discomfort and boredom. All of this was depicted in my initial sketch.
Part 1
After making the sketch, I made simple line art to clean it up. I imagined her wearing a dress, but not really a very fashionable one because I imagine this girl doesn’t care about fashion and treasures things like adventure more.
After sketching, I painted over the skin areas. I was experimenting with not using any line art because I wanted to paint how many famous artists do. I’ve always admired how artists sometimes don’t use any artist and I’ve wondered how they would go about doing it, so this time I decided to move out of my comfort zone and try this out.
I used many varying colors of the base tone for shading, first blocking out the initial shadows and then defining some areas with an even darker color. I really wanted to define her arm in that sense as well. Once I finished shading, I outlined some areas with a very dark brown such as the details in her ear.
After coloring the skin, I used muted pinks to color her lips and added a light pink streak across the upper lip to add highlights. I then proceeded to color the eyes. Using an off-white, I filled in the space of the eye and shaded it with a dark grey. Next, I used a round brush set in a dark brown color and defined the eyelashes, eyelids, and eyebrow.
Finally, I colored in the iris with a darker green color. Then, I use an airbrush set to add (glow) and highlight the eye. For the iris, I used dark blue.
Part 2
Next, I painted her hair in. I use a light blonde color and go over my initial sketch. In my initial concept of the illustration, the elf princess had two ponytails, but I decided to settle on just one after some trouble defining both ponytails.
After the base color was filled in, I then used a textured brush set to a slightly darker brown and painted streaks into her hair. This gives it the added effect of hair. After that, I used several different shades of darker blonde and lighter blonde until I had fully rendered her hair.
Part 3
After painting the hair, I moved on to the clothes. The princess has three gold bands on her shoulder, neck, and waist. I made her dress a plain color because in the world I imagine she lives in people don’t wear very vibrant colors. And, as I said near the beginning of this post, she doesn’t have much of a fashion taste, so her dress is a particularly bland color.
I used Procreate’s smudge brush a lot because it helped make the shading look more like clothes. The fabric of her dress does not reflect light very much because of its material. However, there is a light source on the left side of her, so I added a soft variation of shade in the areas of her dress closest to the light source.
When working on the gold bands, I struggled to shade and highlight them in a way that expressed their metallic material. Textured brushes wouldn’t work because gold is a smooth material. One thing I did know about metal is that the highlights tend to be very dramatic. I tried to reflect this shininess threw a bright yellow highlight using an airbrush set to add (glow).
Part 4
Finally, I worked on the background. I was pulling up several images of castle hallways and used certain aspects of each photo that I liked. In one, there were pillars and arcs surrounding an open window (the light source in the picture). In another, the floor was made of a dark purplish-brown stone texture. In several other pictures, a curved post with many other posts attached to it like branches on the ceiling. All of these aspects I incorporated into my drawing.
Once I finished painting the background, I decided to blur the background in order to make the viewer focus on the main focus of the drawing: the elf princess herself.
And here is the finished result:
See you in the next post!!
Chong
10 Nov, 2022