Demon Trio - Slice - Part 1

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

This series would be the second of the Demon Trio series of painting I started. The last demon character, Slug (see Part 1 and Part 2), was a crude brutish creature. This time, I wanted to work on a slick character. This calls for a little more treatment at the concept stage.

Concepts

From the silhouette I start trying different concepts. To do this, I copy the thumbnail to a separate layer and reduce its opacity. On another layer, I use a 20% transparent brush with black color (which gives me various 20% shades of gray), stroking the brush roughly. I do correct the anatomy a bit - since I do not have much practice in human anatomy it takes a bit of time to get it right.

Once I am satisfied with a rough concept, I take the one I am satisfied with to a new file. For this part of work, I use GIMP. For some reason, I am more at home in GIMP than in Photoshop. You needn’t use any specific software at any stage. Use whatever you are comfortable with. For sketching and conceptualization purposes I find it comfortable to work in GIMP.

In a layer above the scaled up thumbnail layer, I take a small brush (Opacity turned off, Hardness on Pen Pressure, Size on Pen Pressure), so that it is almost like a mechanical pen. I make extensive use of Constructive Anatomy by George B Bridgman for reference to different anatomical parts and see to it that I get it proportionate.

Cleaned Up Line Art

I merge all the visible layers (except background) and then reduce that merged layers opacity to around 50%. On a new layer, I take the same ‘inking’ brush and work on tightening the line art.

Once I am satisfied with the line art to a point, I delete the extra strokes from the bottom merged layer.

I intend to have this on a A4 size at 300 dpi. These thumbnails and lineart are almost 25% smaller. Before scaling it up, I wanted to work on the values a bit more. Working on a smaller sized image is always faster and easier.

I insert another 30%-50% opacity layer and paint in some shadow and darker mid-tone areas. Once I am satisfied, I merge it all, and it is ready for the next stage.

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