Self Portrait, Archer Style

Geisha Warrior commission

This was my first commission, and it's for Adam O. Largely inspired by Memoirs of a Geisha, Miho from Sin City, and a previous piece I did called Lyssa. Japanese letters brush from touch-and-go. Photoshop.

No long-winded description this time. But if you have questions or thoughts, please comment!

Initial sketch

Pose and basic clothing for silhouette

Pose wasn't satisfactory

mid-inking

first draft colors

Frank Miller style

How to Paint Realistic Chainmail

Here is the Photoshop ABR Brush file.

A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying podcast

Teaser image

I ran a real-play game of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying for the ladies of the podcast Close the Door and Come Here. Inspired by this page of the Goblins webcomic, I illustrated the party to get the podcasters excited about the game. Most had never played a tabletop game before, and were unsure of what to expect. The full resolution image is a Patreon exclusive.


You can listen to the adventure here: episode 1 and episode 2.

thumbnail of chainmail brush

While painting the knight I made a chainmail brush in Photoshop to speed things up. It's actually quite simple; it's just the highlight of one ring. When used with enough spacing it stamps down the rings in a row. Work on a dark base for shadows. But be sure to follow normal patterns of chainmail: the chain rows lay horizontally, and flip the brush around so the rows face the opposite direction (so a row of right-facing rings is below the row of left-facing rings).

Initial sketch

I didn't know I was going to take this art to full painting phase. It just started with a morning sketch and I kept going when I heard the response from the group. Eon turned in her character at the last minute, so she was drawn last. You can see the maester originally had a cohort, who was secretly an undead minion, ala Qyburn. But that was dropped as I warned her of the ramifications if such a secret was discovered in-game.

If you're interested in playing the adventure with your own gaming group, here is the pdf homebrew module. It's short and encapsulates the essential themes of Game of Thrones. The adventure is called The Second Whitewalls Rebellion. The notes will be a bit different when you ready them, as I improvised throughout the game and especially at the end.

The Mountain and the Mother of Corpses

Sketch

I wanted to paint Cersei squaring off with a Gregor reminiscent of the Hulk. Thanks to thehyenagallery for suggesting the title. This is from the scene in Game of Thrones season 4 episode 7, Mockingbird. You can watch a timelapse of the painting process here. Photoshop.

 

Black and white values, either from your pencil sketch or speed painting. I usually do shadows on one layer and highlights on another. 

If you skip this and first paint in color, it’s wise to check your values by adding a B&W adjustment layer. 

Inks

Then base colors that we’re going to put our highlights and shadows onto. If you’re separating stuff into layers you can change the base colors later without altering your shading hues.

What you don't want to do is just use black to darken areas and white just to brighten. You may notice the result looks dirty and the color starts to fade. 

Sometimes doing it wrong is okay if the result is something desirable. But with ‘art’, you should learn the rules before you can break them. 

Base colors

For yellow hair, I used red-orange for the darker areas. Choosing a yellow that’s not too yellow for the base color left me room to make the highlights really yellow. 

Other areas to compare to the previous image: under her chin, the light areas on his beard, the vibrancy of his tongue, and the pinkness in her lips.

Shading with color