Lovers’ Portrait
For Drake! It’s the charismatic heroine and her bodyguard (whom we’ve met before) — now in 75% less perilous circumstances:
With dragons and other distractions averted, they now have time to become better acquainted. ^^
This was a ton of fun to shade. And once again, in the course of working on it, I discovered a few new coloring tricks and techniques — including the wonders of Gradient Maps! Oh, Gradient Maps, how did I ever paint skin tones without you?
(…By the way, is this suggestive enough to be NSFW? Should I add an “implied nudity” warning? I am never sure about these things!)
May 6th, 2010 at 9:09 PM
I think you’re safe. There’s nothing showing and it’s pretty classy considering the subject matter. Definitely doesn’t go above a PG rating, I wouldn’t think. There’s implied nudity in G movies even, I think.
Either way – love the soft lighting! You can just see that sunlight glistening off them.
May 7th, 2010 at 5:03 AM
Hey everyone, this is Drake.
I just wanted to give a public ‘thank you’ to Aja for all her hard work in helping me with my project. This piece, as well as the two that preceded it, were part of a grieving project I was doing to honor my late wife, who died from cancer on January 23rd, 2008. You see, we were both fantasy gamers, and the hero & heroine is sort of the amalgamation of our various fantasy personas. I didn’t have as many pictures of my beloved as I wanted, so I needed help capturing her “essence” as I remembered it, to art. She was a free-spirit, a glowing soul, and I think Aja captured her essence very well.
The full gallery of work can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010579&id=1590862825
Thank you again, Aja!
-Drake
May 7th, 2010 at 12:19 PM
Wow! Absolutely wonderful piece. The playfulness here is delightful. I love how the sparkles and glows make it clear she just magic’d those undies right off him. _> <_< And what is this about using Gradient Maps for skin tones? (Apologies again for always asking about art’ing tips…I just can’t seem to help myself. ::sheepish:: )
May 7th, 2010 at 12:30 PM
wait…what happened to my comment? the whole middle got eaten! D:
…oh…ohhhh. I used a less-than sign…and then a greater-than. Now for the comment in it’s entirety! (minus the offending html triggers)
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Wow! Absolutely wonderful piece. The playfulness here is delightful. I love how the sparkles and glows make it clear she just magic’d those undies right off him. ::heart::
I think my favorite detail though is his fingers on the hand at his chest. My eyes keep roving the image and then returning to those fingers. As usual, your hair shading makes me insanely jealous… And that fur makes me want to touch it! D: I’m curious to know how you got it so plush and furry… Was it just a lot of hard work drawing the hairs in the fur?
>_> <_< And what is this about using Gradient Maps for skin tones? (Apologies again for always asking about art’ing tips…I just can’t seem to help myself. ::sheepish:: )
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Also, something I forgot:
Drake, that is truly an inspirational way to honor and remember a loved one. Using art to capture her spark and remember it forever is a beautiful way to keep your life together close to your heart. Thank you for sharing some of her with us!
May 8th, 2010 at 10:28 PM
Thank you, Drake (and you’re more than welcome). I was hesitant to publish such sensitive details on the blog myself, but I’m glad for people to know the story behind the project. It was certainly an honor to work with you on something with that kind of personal significance.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to view the gallery without a Facebook account.
I wonder if there’s any way around that; I’d love to see the full collection of all the artists’ work.
@Liliy: Ah, that’s good. ^^ I wouldn’t want to get anyone in trouble at work!
@KitFang: Thank you! The hair is always my favorite part, so I tend to end up spending extra time on it. XD For the fur, I shaded it with the same hair brush that I used on Mr. Crankyface a while ago, with a lot of short strokes.
And oooh, Gradient Maps. <3 Conveniently, I found out about those while I was struggling with the skin tones on this very picture. I thought: “I’ll figure this out, but first I’ll take a break and check Google Reader… hey, what’s this tutorial site in the recommended feed list?”
The link pretty much explains how to use them. They do wonders for reducing file size, and they’re the perfect thing if you use the method of doing your shading in grayscale before adding color on a separate layer.
A couple extra tips I’ve found:
When you use multiple Gradient Maps to color different parts of a picture, it helps to make the extreme light and dark colors the same on each one, with the unique colors in the middle of the gradient. (For this, I made “black” a dark purple and “white” a really pale yellow.) The lighting seems to look more consistent that way.
Objects can look a bit dull and unrealistically lit with only Gradient Maps to color them, so it helps to add one more layer above the rest, set to Color. I used that to add things like blue back-lighting and brighter pink accents. With the Gradient Maps as a (separate and adjustable) base, it was much easier to experiment until I got the right kind of effect.
I hope that helps! I’m sure there are other great uses for the feature that we haven’t even thought of yet.
*ahem*
And no worries about asking for tips. XD Honestly, anyone who mentions Photoshop in my vicinity would find it difficult to prevent me from going on about all the fun things you can do with it.