Brainstorming
This piece was for Legend of the 5 Rings, Fantasy Flight Games. Part of the parameters of this project were that the female character was blind and painting in an ink and brush style similar to Japanese ink painting. After reading the client brief, using pencil and paper I brainstormed what the image might look like.
Rough Sketches for Review
I usually show 3 rough sketch ideas, but I was having more fun than usual with this one so I added a fourth. I selected options from my brainstorming, scanned them and digitally painted values to communicate the general idea of lighting and value design.
Reference
After a rough sketch was approved, I hired a friend to pose and then looked at many different photos of people from Japan to make sure I shifted the drawing away from the model who had a more European look.
Tight Drawing and Color Study
Studying my various photo references, I refined the approved rough sketch and drew this picture using pencil on Canson Vidalon Vellum, line on one side of the paper, values on the other. In Photoshop I painted a digital “wash” of color. This is where I paused and emailed the client the image to make sure we were on the same page and to get approval to complete the painting.
Changes
It was decided that the direction of the character’s gaze wasn’t really working and their head needed to be more turned toward their painting. Luckily during the photoshoot I had the model try out different head positions. Since the character is meant to be a blind artist, I experimented with several options. Working in Photoshop, I added several different heads from our photoshoot to my drawing. I thought about anatomy and gesture as I experimented to create an interesting pose that would also show the story better. I submitted these two mockups and we decided to go with the option in which the character is sort of looking down but not quite AT their painting. I redrew the head on tracing paper over the top of my initial drawing so I could align the anatomy, scanned it in, and integrated it with the initial scanned drawing.
Final
