For the year 2022, I decided to get into digital art. I initially wanted to get into painting but since it can get messy I locked into digital art. Bought a drawing pad, something basic, just to get started.
This is the first piece of digital art I have created, so nice and harsh criticisms are very welcome. I am not planning on becoming a pro or creating NFTs, I just want to use digital art as a medium of letting go and relaxing.
I pictured a devilish face in my head and I decided that would be my first project. I am using the XP-pen deco v102 and photoshop cs6. I have watched a couple of videos on how to position myself and so on but nothing deep.
I started off with a rough sketch of what I wanted and drew the primary and the other guidelines. It feels a lot odder than doing it on paper. But then again, this is a new experience for me.
I then used the pen tool to stroke the outlines of the face and the horn. The lines and the shapes changed drastically since, unlike the guideline sketches, this was not done freehand.
Then I added the background color. I used the skin tone I wanted to make things simpler for me. I also added a few rough features here and there to act as guides for me. This seems like a very tedious and unproductive process but I think I'll stick to this until I learn newer tricks.
I made the eyes and colored them freehanded. I have no idea what to do with the eyes so I left them as it is. I wanted to add highlights to mark crevices of the face so I added a little white on the inside of the orbitals. Then I simply copy-pasted and flipped the eye to make the other eye.
I didn't know how to go about with the features of the face so I left the nose in a cartoonish sharp nose shape. I also freehanded the lips and added color to them. The opacity was set at low and I brushed a few short strokes of white over the lips to highlight and show the source of light.
Then I started coloring whatever was remaining. That means the headscarf. I wanted it to be shiny leathery black. That meant it had to be smooth but with light reflecting from it. This took some time but with the help of a color palette and a few strokes, I was able to get an okay look to it.
While at the headscarf I also found a better nose shape. It was literally two strokes and I thought to leave it that way. I think this shows light source better than outlining the other side.
From there on it was just coloring the white parts and shading them. I wanted the light source to be on the left. I colored the horns red and added one giant stroke of white with a soft brush to it and erased everything that was outside.
The same for the other horn but with black color and sharp brush with pressure sensitivity on.
For the skin, I used dodge and burn. I think for the chin I used a white color brush and then used smudge to make it look smoother.
I left the black and white color palette in the final picture for no clear reason. I think the shading is pretty good for the first digital art I have ever made.
Do leave a few tips you think I'll find helpful.
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