Demon Trio - Slug - Part 2

• Software: GIMP or Adobe Photoshop
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Demon Trio - Slug

This would be the continuation from Part 1. In this part, I will be finishing off the painting of Slug, one of the three demon characters I have conceptualized. In this post, as part of the character, I will be briefing over how I did a quick study on brass material for armor and weapon of this character.

Brass Material

After cleaning up the different armor of the character along with his weapon, the flail, I actually met with a hurdle of how I would paint the brass material.

After some quick study, I realized that it was not same as highly reflective materials like gold or gold plated surfaces.

The brass material has a lot of saturated yellows and oranges, and even a little bit of dark green in them. To get a better feel of it, I would suggest to examine actual brass materail - either at any museum where there are sculptures or some photos.

Once you understand how the material behaves under different lighting conditions, applying the texture becomes almost routine.

Color Balancing

Once I had applied the the brass material, I realized that it is actually taking too much of the focus. Of course, I was still left with highlighting and giving other details on the hide of Slug.

Before proceeding to paint the highlights and the darker shadows (assuming the light coming from the right top), I use the color balancer to warm up the skin tone a bit. Since I had rendered the brass material in a different layer, it remained unaffected.

Once the details on the skin like the tough hide and bulging veins at some places were rendered, I created a new layer and started painting the shadows in dark but paled down purple. This is because the primary light source is yellow. The shadows were painted pretty casually, and then later faded down by bringing down the opacity of that layer.

Sharpening the eyes a bit and few other details, the first of the painting series is complete.

Do head over to the deviantART entry to check out a poster version of the painting.

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