Hellion Process

Hey y'all!  I captured many stages of progress on this Hellion commission I did awhile back and I've finally gotten the energy to show you a little bit of my step by step process.

The first image is a snap from my phone that I sent to the client upon finishing the art, readying it for shipment, and receiving the second half of my payment.  There's a lot of good faith in the commissioning process and I take half payment up front, and half when I'm ready to ship.  I kinda want the client to see the finished art for the first time when they open their package, but sending them a pic like this is nice so they know I'm a legit operation.  Spoiler: I am a legit operation.

Image 2:  The sketches!  The first two were explorations I did for myself, and the third is the sketch I sent to the client to sign off on.  At this stage, the client can tell me any changes they want made and then it's off to the finish.  The prompt for this piece was queer soft boy fashion and I received tons of inspiring reference material to work from.  The only other note was to make Hellion look half Asian and I hope I nailed that.

Image 3:  The pencils!  I use Prismacolor Col-Erase to start, and then I "ink" my drawing with Prismacolor Verithin because they are hard enough to keep a pretty thin line.  I don't use ink to do my finished linework anymore because I enjoy the softer look of pencils, and often my paint will cover the linework completely, which is a look I quite enjoy.  The hard thing about working on watercolor paper is doing the sketch of the drawing because unless you know pretty much what you're going to be committing to, you don't wanna erase a lot on the tooth of the paper.  It will change the texture and make your watercolors look uneven or disrupted.  The sketching is maybe one of the more stressful parts of the process for me.

Image 4:  Paints!  Doing the green glow around Hellion was SO STRESSFUL.  I rarely do effects like that in my paintings because it's hard, takes lots of planning, and rarely comes out how I want it to.  In the end I think the glow looks amazing (not to pat myself on the shoulder too hard) but my god.  I need to revel in my success here because I had no clue if it would turn out.  As in most paintings, it looked iffy for a long time until it finally started to come together.  Apologies there's such a huge jump in progress between these two shots.  I forgot to take more snaps as I was working.  Just got lost in it, I suppose.

Image 5:  Details of his face!  You can see just how far these pieces come.  The sketch and linework can look very different from the final outcome, and I often futz and change things along the way.  I really love painting faces.  I did a little headshot series awhile back and my painting abilities for faces really jumped during that time.  Next up I need to work on my shoes and hands (I get this critique now and again).  A big part of that is that I haven't practiced much, and a smaller part of that is I haven't quite figured out how best to not allow the painting process to muck up my linework on hands.  Hands are so fine and small compared to the rest of the drawing and I really need to hunker down and focus and refine my detail work because watercolors can be a little unruly for that level of care.  Anyway, I'll try and be better!  Be best!

Image 6:  Final art scan!  So happy with how this painting came out.  I hope y'all like it too.  If you have any questions or want me to clarify anything comment below and let's chat it out!