PART 1: Click Here
Welcome back. This time on How to paint like me we are going to do character work which is way more awesome than the boring background b.s. of last time. Plenty of paint, booze, and more to be had. Let’s get this party started shall we…
First we need a cocktail because trying to teach people how to do stuff is hard work and hard work demands hard liquor. Luckily I have some Cognac and diet Coke to make it through the trials and tribulations.
Next if your brushes don’t look like this, you are doing something RIGHT. I am notorious for not taking care of my brushes. I leave them in water for weeks at a time and hardly ever clean them. the water is almost always dirty. If you are like me buy the cheapy ass brushes that come in packs of 6 at Michaels. If you take care of your stuff then go for the nicer ones. I almost primarily use flat and liner brushes when working on characters. depending on how small i want my lines i will sometimes cut bristles off the brushes to get closer to my ideal lines (see brush on the right)
Next we are going to pull out reference material. typically i will draw something to get an idea on what I want to do but for this piece i just decided to wing it. Our character is going to be a Krampus. If you don’t know what a Krampus is then you’ve never seen the Venture Brothers Holiday Special. Well go watch that shit. It’s hilarious.
Do you remember those How to draw books from the library that always told you to draw shapes to make everything? Well yeah I do that shit too. instead of simple circles or squares though i go for a rough shape of the actual body parts. here two circles and some spock point ears make the basic face structure. then i fill it in with white as a buff for the area. I am going to be using a lot of hues and washes and the background is too dark to paint these without a good first layer buff.
Then I add a layer of green. This green hue is especially watery and shitty. I am too lazy to stop and buy a good tube of green paint at the moment so we are going to work with this crap. if you notice I start at the bottom right and bring the color up. that is because this paint be darker on the first dab so doing this helps keep the light source correct.
After the wash of green hue I threw in some raw sienna to not only thicken the coat of shit paint but also to give the green a swampy color hue. Krampus is very earth toned or fire red depending on which kind of German illustrator you are talking to. we want the earthy tones because we are down to earth…and stuff.
another layer of raw sienna mixed with a dab of white to start bring out facial features. the wrinkled brow, nose, and eyes are starting to come out now.
I then add a layer of black with a lot of water in the brush. this gives us a bunch of definition without being too dark to blend in to the skin tone later to give a less illustrated and more natural looking shadow structure. the really dark parts are going to be hair. you’ll see…
slightly more refinement to the face and added the base color for the eyes. the yellow i have is just as shitty as the green and again i’m going to have to layer and mix to get the color done correct.
i come through again with some white to add reflective qualities to the Krampus skin. this makes the character more 3d pop than flat how it had been looking.
Now there’s hair and teeth and the eyes are starting to look solid. more shadows added to around the eyes to give an evil aura cuz this is after all the bad side of Christmas we are talking about here. Krampus can’t be looking nice for the children.
Added red to the horns and shaded them. Them horns are sexy. so red and full of hate.
Speaking of red, how many Krampuses have you seen NOT sticking their tongues out. So it’s tongue action job. Did a base coat of white with some red mixed in to get the color in and save a step. I unattentionally got the reflection perfect the first time so yeah let’s celebrate. ::grabs drink::
some blending of red on the backside to give the tongue more pop and we are looking awesome now.
next we add an apple to the tongue. why? I have no idea. I just thought it would be cool if the tongue was holding something.
add some reflection and clean up the color a bit and boom bam we got an apple for Mr. Krampus to tempt bad children with so they will get flogged by him.
The final image. 5×7″ acrylic on canvas. All it needs a good varnish (i recommend car clear coat), and a signature. Now that you have seen how it was made you should buy it. message me at evan@noartificialflavors.net and make me an offer.
