BLACK PARADE ILLUSTRATION WIP

As all of you know, it's the 12th anniversary of the Black Parade, one of the most Iconique(tm) looks in Emo Culture. 

So here I am, documenting my entire journey in a Patreon blog post. I like to share my methods with my patrons, especially on my illustration work, because I have a very roundabout and intuitive way to approaching illustrations. 

First thing's first, I know what I'm basing this illustration off off- the music video for Welcome to the Black Parade. The video was where I got the ideas for the flowers, color scheme, and general layout. So, I grabbed some screencaps and photo shoot references. I also added some notes like *snow and *b&w w/ red and the size I wanted the illustration to be.

Then I get started on my thumbnails! The screencaps that I got weren't enough for my Artistic Eye(tm), so I consulted my Pinterest board of inspirational art. Basically, everything that I like goes into this board (I have 12 other boards with just art inspiration), and made note of what I wanted to put into my illustration. I do this when I start any of my drawings!

I basically try to figure out what my composition will be. I have to fit all five members of the band on the piece, so I need to keep that in mind, plus incorporating all of the other elements I wanted. In the end, I decided to go with the top right one.

I refined my thumbnail and moved things around a bit. It's okay if things are messy at this point, because this is the problem-solving portion of the illustration! 

Now, onto the sketch, which includes finalizing poses. I wanted to go with the band standing normally, but after sketching it out, I decided to use more dynamic poses, like as if they were playing a song.

So I start my sketch by opening up a new document at 17x11" and scaling it down a bit so I can sketch faster.

And... sketched!!

Each of them had different outfits and I had to learn how to draw guitars... 

But it's coming along! I'm leaving some extra details up to the painting process, but for now, it's onto linework and refining the piece!

Currently, the canvas is at 20x12" at 600dpi. The flowers and background will be painted in, since they're more organic, and I'd like to have more time to figure out where to place them. 

To be continued...