The second illustration for Elements -
The Shard Golem, to be summoned by combining shards using the Shard of *Integrity.
Shard Golem
Process is actually available this time:
Steps taken:Original image size was ~1200 px tall
Tools used:
Brush set to Shape Dynamics and Other Dynamics - Opacity control
Color picker
Eyedropper
1. Shade out main silhouette of the figure. In the video, switched from head-on view to lower-eye view (though it switched back as I was painting it)
2. Add lighting in the form of whites and greys - Comes with experience, but you have to be able to check to see if the image 'reads' correctly - If you can't tell the character apart from the background, you have a problem. I fixed this by just having a strong backlight to the golem, while having a strong internal light coming from his chest and hands.
3. Wash over color using an new adjustments layer (I used a layer set to soft light, then compressed). Some basic color theory is necessary, I usually use a semi-monochromatic (in this case, blues and purples for cool colors) but it may have worked better with a slight split complementary color addition (i.e. yellow or red if the main subject is blue).
4. Paint everything while zoomed out (Macroscopic style). The reason why you do this is because it's how your eye works - nobody's mind sees thing in ultra-high resolution, so you don't have to paint with your screen zoomed so much you only see 20 pixels at once. In fact, not only would that take forever, it'd actually look terrible once you finished since your mind isn't used to seeing so much detail in one spot. (like white noise)
5. Res up when necessary (change image size to ~4000 px tall at 300 dpi) when you feel that the painting is 'done' at the macroscopic level
6. Paint in details, background - in this case, I just added seams in the stone as well as arcs of lightning
This one took less time than the Seraph, thanks to the lack of wings. The number of corrections needed to be made on the body was really high, since it was difficult to make the body look 'correct' with random stones everywhere.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
