This is the third in a series of what are technically concept paintings codifying characters in the novel that I'm writing. This lady goes by the name of Maeve, though it isn't her real name. She is described throughout the novel as wearing pieces of white wooden armour, wielding two silver-bladed axes, and having quite an unusual style. She's kinda a cross between Avril Lavigne and a Celtic Goddess/Faerie Queen.
This is a fairly early render of it. As you can see, her right hand is actually cut n paste from a photograph until I actually paint a proper hand in. I just needed something there to balance the piece out. Eventually she'll be holding one of her axes.
My biggest issues so far are going to be the dress itself, which doesn't look very fabricy yet; the hair, which I've decided is going to be like Miss Lavigne's hair but without the streak of pink; and the zip... my style doesn't lend itself well to tiny details like that, so that's going to be a real challenge for me.
So far I'm looking for any comments of criticisms that people have. Just wanna know what people think, and for people to point out if I've made any glaring errors/mistakes that I can't see :)
This first version shows the ink lines, which has some of the detail I'm working towards.
This second version is ever so slightly further on, and does away with the lines so you can see a bit more of the rudimentary detail beneath.
This stupid window thing hates me! It closed on me twice! Now I have to type everything -again-... I want to die. Well maybe not. Id rather just say what I wanted to say which was...
Hello!
This is looking lovely.
Don't be concerned about the dress. The dress should be the least of
your worries because if I had started painting a dress that looked as
good as yours right now id be rather pleased because you've already
succeeded at the hardest part, folds and gravity.
You should tell us what kind of fabric you're trying to achieve. It
looks like silk yet it also doesn't because at the legs its somewhat transparent but over the chest it's rather opaque. You should choose a
fabric type and then harmonize the opacity or transparency over the
whole outfit. If you tell us what fabric you're thinking about
painting, you might get some cool advice.
What you should be more concerned about is the hair. Is it blonde?
I see you've used a shadow colour and a highlight color for
your base blocking because you can see how stark the contrast is right
now, that tends to make things much harder and more complicated because you should paint foundations in shadows and midtones only. What
makes us see hairs is by seeing the shadows and darker bits that exist
between the hairs, you cannot successfully define hairs by painting shadows around
hairs, you paint sequentially lighter lights over darks and in smooth gradation.
Try picking out all your hair colours now and then paint the entire body of hair with the shadow colour. Then using two midtones define the shapes with big stripes of color, not by drawing in lines. By drawing in lines, you create hair that is 'tiered', hair that is superposed over one another in chunks, not as attractive as it can be.
wow! i don't think you should have any concerns about what you can't do! this is looking stunning, and any problems you come across i'm sure you'll tackle them.
skin is looking lovely, the hand at the side of her hips already looks perfect to me, the dress is coming on nicely, the only reason it's not looking very fabricy at the minute i think is the lack of blending on the lights & darks, but i'm sure you'll get to that. Is the dress a very fine fabric? i only ask as i can slightly see her thigh through it, if that's the case it's looking a little too heavy to be see through at the moment, but then again, it could be a strong light behind her, and it that case the thigh would be more of a silhouette,
i'm loving this though! really looking forward to seeing it finished.!
About the dress: the original idea for the dress was a two-piece costume with a kinda canvasy top and a more silken skirt. Obviously now I've solidified this into one garment I need to make up my mind. While technically she's a warrior maiden, we all know fantasy warriors don't need great thick clunking armour to wade into battle, so I'm probably going to lighten the opacity of the upper half of her dress too by bringing in some more fleshy tones as well as bring through some of the colour of her bra (no gravity defying cleavage in my reality). I also need to deepen the shadows in places and really pop out the silky highlights.
For the thigh that's showing through, that kinda has two purposes:
1) I was wanting to see if I actually could make the dress look transparent with a strong backlight (yeah the main light source is indeed mid-left - the big white patch in the sky has the sun behind some clouds; though there will be a second, refracted light source to the right of the image);
2) to remind myself that that was where the leg was - sometimes I'm a really lazy painter and just cover the legs up with loose fabric so I don't have to paint the detail...especially knees. This time I wanted to make sure I put a bit of effort into it.
As for the hair, I'm really just experimenting at the moment. For the blocking of colour I wanted to outline her face early so I could see what I was doing. Hair is usually one of the last things I paint, so I have time to decide whether she's going to have the Avril Lavigne bleached blonde look with the dark roots showing through, or if she'll go for the platinum blonde look of my other ladies in white. Nice thing about this particular character in the novel is that she can appear with any hair colour that takes her fancy, so I'm not limiting my self in that way.
Few more details to paint in today, then I'm going to bump up the size/resolution so I can really start working on the details.
Okay, a bit more progress being made here. Have been focused mostly on the dress, using a couple of ideas pinched from Marta Dahlig's iFX tutorial on painting clothing and fabric (namely the 'just add water' brush, which I'd never tried before).
I'm rather surprised at the difference it made. Here's a version with some of the folds smoothed out into more materialy creases:
As you can see I also started painting the zipper in, and have come to the conclusion that I do not like painting zippers. At all. Not one bit. They're fiddly. Mind you, still haven't bumped the image size up yet, so plenty of time for fiddling yet.
Here's the latest version, with a bit more highlighting. I've decided that the dress actually looks better as some kind of slightly thicker, faerieweave material, so I'm going to do away with the translucent thigh for consistency. A pity, but there's still plenty of leg left to play with ^_^
(Yeah I know I need to paint the actual zip slider in... haven't forgotten ;P )
Any more hints/comments/crits would be very welcome ^_^
Decided to do something about the hair, which was starting to bug me. It's be no means finished, but it has something more in the proximity of volume now, which makes it seem less plasticy.
Making it sit less like a wig will come after I have painted the face and neck in a bit more convincingly.
As you can see, I've continued to work on the dress, which now has somewhere between a silk and an almost white leathery quality to it. I quite like the white leather idea, though I don't want to push it too far towards what could end up looking like PVC, so i'm gonna take a look at some leather textures to give it that gritty cow-hide feel.
I've also sketched her axes in. Obviously I need to properly paint her right hand in, clutching at the axe, but I'm just messing about with perspective at the moment.
Hmm there is something wrong with her jawline. Usually a jawline has angles, and you have mad it completely curved so it almost looks like she is wearing a mask.
Again more detail on the hair. Did some work on the neck and face, including straightening out that awkward jawline that Comtessa pointed out (and I'd completely missed >_<)
Bit of work on the bra done as well. Tricky to make black look interesting without being too shiny. Hopefully it vaguely worked.
Well, due to a lack of time and inspiration, I took a few days off and then came back to this mess of a painting. Still haven't ventured below her waist, but I've done a fair bit of work on the head and hair. Got a new monitor and I think the calibration may be a bit off, so if everything looks a bit too saturated, it would be helpful to point it out. Otherwise, any advice/comments on stuff above her waist would be useful thanks. (I say above her waist because I know the hand/axes/legs/skirt bit need work.)
More work done on the face, which still stands out a bit too much for my liking. Also done some anatomical correction of the upper body. Finally I dumped the shoulder pad, which I just didn't like. She loses the chunky warrior maiden look a bit, but I plan on making her a bit more feral and primal to make up for it I think.
I think the image is really beautiful at this point, but one thing to consider... You have a crazy warrior lady holding axes... the expression on her face just doesn't match that at all. Her face tells me she's pining for a loved one.. and not in the "I'm going to kill those *** orcs who took him" kind of way.. but in the "dutiful girlfriend/wife looking after the homestead and awaiting his return" kind of way... yes / no?
Pining for a loved one --- spot on actually! That be exactly what she's doing. I'm still not certain I'm gonna go ahead with the axes anyways. But if I do, I will be "wilding" her up a bit to give her more of a cold, calm, killer look. I need to do a tiny bit of work on her mouth anyway, and that would be fairly easy to twist into a snarl.
As for the dress, there are actually straps. I just painted over them to get the skin more smooth. The first one was originally hidden by the shoulderpad, so I'll need to sort that out, but the second one is gonna go across and up as if it's almost falling off her shoulder. The corner of the dress is kinda pointing in the right direction. Ish. :)
Mind you, the dress is tight enough round the bodice to hold itself up simply through the friction/tension on the zip (which I still need to paint in - haven't forgotten ^_^). Thus the many many folds. At least, that's the idea >_<
This is looking lovely. 
