Show your process

demotlj

I've been watching "Digital Painting II" with Marco Bucci and was interested to see that his process feels opposite to that of the other instructors at SVS. Most of the classes say, "Thumbnail first trying out shapes and values, and then do color studies and details." Marco Bucci laid out his color first using broad paint strokes to throw down a general design and then he went back and did thumbnails to improve the value structure. Finally, he did his character design and it is only then that he begins to draw and use line. He calls it excavating, and if I am understanding him correctly, he uses the paint brush to put down a general impression or feeling and then works to bring to life the picture that he envisions in there. I am reminded of that old anecdote about the sculptor who explains his process -- "All you have to do is to take a big chunk of marble and a hammer and chisel, make up your mind what you are about to create and chip off all the marble you don’t want.”

It's interesting that all of the same elements are included in his process (thumbnails, value study, character design, color) but the order is quite different.

Nyrryl Cadiz

I’d love to! But I don’t know how to describe mine in words. Lol My process is very messy.

Jason Bowen

Here is one of my realtime videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiCMaI4HMK8

I use OBS to screen capture and record my webcam

IgorWoznicki

Fun thread!
My process is slightly different everytime I make an artwork and I hardly ever save it up step by step. However, I have process pictures for one of my favourite paintings I've made this year so here ya go!

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Starting with a quick gesture and construction, then moving on to more redefined construction, adding surface lines and details. I love working traditionally so usually I print my stuff out and ink it with some pens.

I sketch the design, pose ideas and such in my sketchbook before I start, of course

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Andd here are two rendering steps. Didn't save up the middle one so ya got flat colors to full render. As you can see, I add some gradients to my flat colors, playing around with saturation, temperature and value a bit before I even move on to shading. I like to keep my flats darker, midtones or shadows even, so all I do later is just add light on it and darken only a few areas.

That would be it, nothing fency really. I am glad I saved steps for this one! I don't have anything else though...shame. Maybe I will keep process photos of my marker pieces next time

Jose A Nieto

I love seeing others process as well as my own! I sometimes post a video timelapse on some of my pieces

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxQOor_nX1RRIpiA-pdrzQ?view_as=subscriber

This is one of my latests pieces

I did some character studies for the city and the main protagonist

MichaelaH

My process
I have topic, than I make my story to it, draw some thumbnails, draw raw sketches, draw clean sketch, (value thumbnail, value color, did both for the first time with godzilla), color mostly everything on separate layer, put multiply and screen layers for each lyaer and at the end playing little with effects. Sometime I use layers with textures.

Little-ones-against-Godzilla_process (Groß).jpg

Norman Morana

This is so awesome! I really like see how other people work and love sharing my process.

This piece originated from wanting to have two characters scoping out an alley. Then through exploring ideas turned to the woods, then hiding from someone. Eventually I had the idea of it being a giant crow. Next was to figure out where they would hide. I liked having the characters in the woods but, knew there was a way to up the danger so, I moved them to an open field. Looking to further this I thought it would be interesting to have their only cover by a group of cows that could move at any moment. Lastly I was looking for little story details to give them a reason for running from the crow, the green bag, and the holes in the crown to hint at whats in the bag.

Thumbnails

I wanted to have some understanding of crow and cow anatomy so I did a few sketches to give ideas on how to simplify.

Taking the piece to photoshop for the cleanup, value, and color test.

A big challenge was figuring out a pose for the kids. There was even more exploration than this in the digital file.

Final

I hope you enjoyed. I love talking about this stuff so ask away if there are any questions.

Heather Boyd

@Norman-Morana

These are wonderful and I have enjoyed looking through them. You definitely have many ideas sketched out. A sketchbook full of scribbling like this I would go through over and over again.

demotlj

@Norman-Morana Amazing process and amazing work. Thanks for sharing this.

lmrush

Fabulous process all-love seeing everyone's work

Jose A Nieto

@MichaelaH Love the breakdown of your whole process

@Norman-Morana Loved the end result, and your study of all the pieces involved

Norman Morana

@demotlj Thank you for the kind words

Norman Morana

@Heather-Boyd Thank you so much! I'd love to share. Haha, but sometimes they might make me look like a madman

jakecrowe

I saw this thread earlier in the week and thought I would document my process for the fun of it. This is usually how I operate except this time I've decided to forgo inking. I think it came out pretty well.

1: Rough sketches, I knew I wanted to draw some sort of fishy person in a medieval society so I got to doodling. I may blow these all out if I have time. I chose to go with the second fella from the left.

2: I then blow up the rough and pencil (all digital; ipad pro; apple pencil; procreate) some details. My next step would usually be to ink but as I said, I'm trying some new things out now that I have a better understanding with color.

3: Flats! I also break everything down into layers, there are 26 in this piece and alpha lock them. This way I can freely color with big strokes on each "object" without having to worry about the rest of the piece.

4: Color! This took the most time but was also the most fun. Color is still pretty new to me, I've spent my entire career avoiding it or using pre-made color palettes with really no idea WHY they worked. Thanks to @Will-Terry i finally jumped into the water.

5: I then brought the piece into Photoshop for some touch ups.

Overall I'm happy with the final piece, it's just something for instagram that I spent too much time on and doesn't really fit into any portfolio but I was glad to get the color practice in and learn some new things.