An entry for the "Musical Retro Wo-Owl"

The final image:
Random Wo-Owl singer n.jpg

My inspiration comes from the 80s music scene which was synonym with contrasting and high saturation colors. The decade saw the emergence of post-punk (Joy Division, The Smiths), gothic (The Cure), glam, psychedelic and new wave rock, along with techno, electro and pop music. Replacing the dying disco scene in the early 80s (Thanks internet! XD). But currently I've been listening to Mystery Jets and The Voidz. New bands that plays the kind of music from that era and for me personally they are worth checking out if you are into the 80s musics.

For this character design, I imagined a female owl vocalist for an 80s all-girls band. Maybe she's on the front cover of the band's album, or a poster. The name of her band is The Cahootz, because hoots. For owls. Yeah. :d

The Process:

Random Wo-Owl singer breakdown a.jpg

I started on a medium grey canvas in Photoshop. For designing, grey is used to make sure you can check your value readily while painting. This way your design will be comprised of both dark and light tones, and will be much easier to fix the middle tone if they are too blended together.

As usual, I randomly painted a silhouette to find a suitable pose. Once I got it, I just transformed, liquified and repainted some parts to get better body gesture out of the initial form.

Random Wo-Owl singer breakdown b.jpg

I gave her a big hairdo, and a guitar. I traced a real guitar with minor adjustments and turned it into a glowing silhouette. I also laid some textures on her, prominently on her pants with leopard pattern. I used contrasting almost white rimlight on the left sides of her body. Then I painted the wire and "The Cahootz" sign on the same layer with the guitar, set to outer glow in the blending options.

For the background, I was still using the three main color ranges I've had in mind from the start; purple/magenta, turquoise/ cyan, and orange/ yellow. I masked the background with halftone pattern to push the retro mood even further. And finally a basic lightning shape across the right side of the painting.