fenneqy

Monster Illustration Process

Added 2024-08-26 10:01:29 +0000 UTC

Sometimes my illustration process gets a little weird lol. A lot of them begin as one-off sketches that spark some inspiration within me, and this is a good showcase of how I really do not draw like a normal person 😭 compared to others' processes I've seen online, anyway. Not sure why this is, but if my sketch isn't thumbnail-tier I find that my final piece suffers and it never looks right. Trying too hard on the 'sketch' and then moving to lineart always fails me, I usually end up just taking a good looking sketch and making it the lineart! Sometimes it saves time which is nice, but it is frustrating that whenever I take a crack at cleaner lines they always end up stiff to me. Anyway, this was a cool one! This was the last illustration I made right before I got to work on the comic, it was what really gave me the inspiration to finally cave and start it. Blocking out the wolf is always neat, but the main draw for me here were the colors. Experimenting with color can be time consuming, so in the comic I try to keep it simple, but I really love going crazy when I'm able to. Eventually I realized that Leo's brown hair wasn't working with the rest of the palette under all the blending modes, it turned orange! So I found those pinks to act as a better substitute. Finally I like going over the base lineart with the drawing's (altered final) colors to avoid it feeling flat--it really adds depth IMO. Sorry if I'm rambling! I ramble a lot, and I feel like my explanations don't always make sense. Explaining why and how I do things is hard, but I try! TL;DR it's a lot of layers upon layers of blend modes and line build-up.