Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Process

Some people like to see this kind of stuff so I thought I would break down my creative process. I tend to do a ton of drawing and rough sketches before I get to the completed composition. As you can see in this preliminary sketch for "Loana" I will sometimes patch together a bunch of different elements that I've drawn to find the best layout that works for the composition. All this happens, by the way, after I do a ton of research. "Loana" is the cave woman in "One Million Years B.C." played by the stunningly beautiful Roquel Welch. Running around dodging and battling dinos, the scantly clad Roquel continues to drop jaws till this day. It was a cinch to realize she was going to have to be depicted in "The Girl Show".
I will often times redraw rough sketches until I get a more refined drawing like this one of "Uhura" so that I can make sure all my lines are where I want them and the style is defined before I paint. I don't always plan things out to this extent but all this preliminary stuff helps the overall composition. Through drawing, I can solve problems with tangents and overall ballance.

I still won't lay down a brush until I do some color studies. Finally I will quickly block out the composition and run through a combination of colors and values to make sure the subject matter contrasts well and the colors work together. The computer is a friend and no matter how much you like traditional media, "control z" can make life a lot simpler. Often times I will do a finished digital version before I paint. That's not the case in this color study I did for my "Jane Darrow" painting where I was really just trying to suss out some colors in photoshop. You can see all the finished paintings below.

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