Enviromental Work Thumbnails to Final Images

I was very keen for this project, having never really bothered with backgrounds, at first I was a bit scared despite wanting to learn, the first challenge was understanding distances and colouring in the back of the image colouring my way forward. Also coming up with original landscapes, I didn't want to get all cliche with Bath and Georgian buildings. I wanted mine to look rough and almost scrubby, I tried to have a look for images of buildings like this but only found a few that weren't what I wanted so I tuned in to a little more Pirates of the Caribbean for inspiration. Suitably inspired I drew the thumbnails, value shaded them and coloured them in.

I thought the coloured pieces came out wonderfully, obviously I have a little more to understand about distances and perspective, but that will come with practice. I felt more attached to the dock and house scenes because they involved my character. So I chose to do those two. In the house scene my character sits, with the flintlock mechanism, looking as if she slightly regrets killing the voodoo ex slave and is pondering what to do with her new found bag of gold. The dock scene I can imagine this is where the soldier returns from the war.

 

 The first one I feel like I could have done the lighting better, maybe studied some candle lit faces as I feel the orange blurs out the face slightly, the second image could possibly have been sharper and a bit more defined, I was experimenting a bit learning photoshop a bit more, I do like the look of it though, I like some of the more vibrant colourings and the water looks nicely murky.

Final Image

And now the grand reveal, the final image that my project has been building up to. This was the VERY first drawing that I have done that is in colour, has featured a background and doesn't rely purely on outlining. The biggest challenge for me was obviously understanding the colour palettes, figuring out layers and drawing without lines. Firstly I started out with basic lines, seeing what went where. Once I have done this I moved onto basic colours, then onto working on the environment, and then details and finally adding the character last.

I really feel like I have achieved something with this final image, having never achieved success with any drawing to this degree. My favourite part is the ocean, I love the colours that sort of just happened, I was trying to make it look like a traditional British ocean as my character is set in Georgian Europe (or specifically for me, England) the ocean wouldn't be bright blue like in the Bahamas or the Caribbean. I feel like I have successfully replicated it in this image.

Character Models and Sheets

These are my character and model sheets, I kept them quite simple in black and white against a grey background as I felt this made the images stand out, also I thought in the eyes of someone crafting my character from the concepts that having the basic lines with a colour guide would help them more. I am also quite fond of my drawings being in black and white. This was fun for me as I had just really started discovering how my tablet worked. With the character designs I felt that as my girl was quite cocky she wouldn't really have a sad face, so I just went with slightly disinterested instead

The last image was the first I had drawn solely in Photoshop so I felt she deserved some colour. Below are the Front, back and sides of my character, along with a few sheets of items that I felt were meaningful to her such as her hip flask which she keeps in her peg leg and the peg leg itself and how it would attach to the leg. I also wanted to show closeups of her shawl and boots as these are key to hiding her gender. The boots which are too baggy for her and the old shawl which hides some of her chest.

Overall I think these sheets all match well together and bring my soldier somewhat to life.

Colour Variations.

Doing the value was tricky, learning to use layers and the opacity tool to create colour overlays was another kettle of fish, but once I knew what to do I found it quite easy to churn out different colour versions of my chosen two value pieces. Choosing colours however was rather annoying as the perfectionist in me wants everything to look nice. I wanted some of the colours to look mismatched, like my pirate girl had just stolen different mens clothes and thrown them together. These are the first coloured values I done.

I think my favourite out of the lot was the middle one, I thought the colours worked quite nicely together. As this wasn't the value I chose for my final design I picked the colours I liked most from these three and tried to incorperate them into the final design.

I thought the brown jacket was a little too drab and the colours in the last image didn't really catch my eye. The middle and the top ones are my favourite, for the final image in the project I want to combine them to create the final outfit .... I have said final too many times. I like the patches on the middle one and the scratches on the shirt in the top one. I kept the stripes in the design on all three as I want the trousers to look 'piratey'. I kept the wigs the same three colours as these were the only three colours I was interested in. I am quite partial to the blue or the pink, more so with the blue as it works better with the green coat. The addition of the buckle works quite nicely breaking up the solid black of the boots in my opinion.

Face drawn from 3rd value variant.

I feel this deserves a blog post to itself because it marks a moment in my drawing career, having purely been a pencil and paper kind of drawer I've always found the concept of digital and tablet work fairly bemusing, I've never really drawn any detail, faces, landscapes on a computer before so this piece of work makes me feel quite chuffed.

In the long run it's probably not he most exciting face profile I will draw, but to me it is amazing just because it's the first face I've drawn that looks like a face! It certainly makes me think I'm going to do well on this course, Iwould never have ventured into digital much without it.

This is one of the first sketches from the values I have done digitally and is how I imagine my pirate lady (she really needs a name!) to look underneath her bandana mask. I didn't want her to look to pretty, and I have a thing for broken noses, I love her already! Can't wait to draw more of her!

Powdered Wigs.

As a wig is the big part of hiding my characters gender I decided to do a little more research into powdered wigs in the Georgian Era, I only knew a tiny bit about wigs of this time period, thankfully Wikipedia saved the day!

"In the 18th century, men's wigs were powdered in order to give them their distinctive white or off-white color. Women in the 18th century did not wear wigs, but wore a coiffure supplemented by artificial hair or hair from other sources. Women mainly powdered their hair grey, or blue-ish grey, and from the 1770s onwards never bright white like men. Wig powder was made from finely ground starch that was scented with orange flower, lavender, or orris root. Wig powder was occasionally colored violet, blue, pink or yellow, but was most often used as off-white. Powdered wigs (men) and powdered natural hair with supplemental hairpieces (women) became an essential for full dress occasions and continued in use until almost the end of the 18th century. The elaborate form of wigs worn at the coronation of George III in 1761 was lampooned by William Hogarth in his engraving Five Orders of Periwigs. Powdering wigs and extensions were messy and inconvenient, and the development of the naturally white or off-white powderless wig (made of horsehair) for men is no doubt what has made the retention of wigs in everyday court dress a practical possibility. By the 1780s, young men were setting a fashion trend by lightly powdering their natural hair, as women had already done from the 1770s onwards. After 1790, both wigs and powder were reserved for older, more conservative men, and were in use by ladies being presented at court. After 1790 English women seldom powdered their hair. In 1795, the British government levied a tax on hair powder of one guinea per year. This tax effectively caused the demise of both the fashion for wigs and powder. Granville Leveson-Gower, in Paris during the winter of 1796, noted "The word citoyen seemed but very little in use, and hair powder being very common, the appearance of the people was less democratic than in England." Among women in the French court of Versailles in the mid-to-late 18th century, large, elaborate and often themed wigs (such as the stereotypical "boat poufs") were in vogue for women. These combed-up hair extensions were often very heavy, weighted down with pomades, powders, and other ornamentation. In the late 18th century these coiffures (along with many other indulgences in court life) became symbolic of the decadence of the French nobility, and for that reason quickly became out of fashion from the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789.

During the 18th century, men's wigs became smaller and more formal with several professions adopting them as part of their official costumes. This tradition survives in a few legal systems. They are routinely worn in various countries of the Commonwealth. Until 1823, bishops of the Church of England and Church of Ireland wore ceremonial wigs."

 

I wanted to toy with the idea of having a coloured wig to confuse people about my characters gender even more, and reading that it was a thing to 'powder colour' wigs gives me a little bit more freedom with the colour and the variety of the wig.

Value Study Pieces.

Another few days, another new blog post, getting better at motivating myself into writing these, old 'before uni' Hazel would be too scared to write them. Anyway I finally get myself round to posting up my value studies. I kind of struggled with understanding value even though it is a really simple concept, with the first piece it was the first time I'd worked purely with greyscales and b/w so excuse the poorness even though it did end up looking pretty interesting!

The next piece I used a larger brush to create a better shaded effect, although the first piece looked quite nice the second piece looked much better and more what was asked for. I loved the shaded effect on the wig as it makes it look fluffier and obviously a different fabric effect than the clothing.

The third and final value study I did incorporated all the ideas that I wanted into it. This (and the second value) will be the study I will chose to use as the final character design with colour variations, facial studies, model and character sheets. I really liked the way it turned out with the shading and the whole look of the character, she looks overtly male in these clothing. I chose not to keep the crutch as I was having a lot of problems with it. Having seen a few pirate outfits with no crutches I thought I would give it a shot thinking she could have had practise walking on the peg-leg.

I will now move on to posting the colour variations.