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Hello everybody , this is Yasmeen from Yarkspirifantasyart.com, and welcome to another illustration video
tutorial. So for this weeks tutorial the request was that I actually draw a snake woman who
is preferably hunting or stalking her prey. For this reason I actually chose to have the
prey to be human, but I wanted to have more of a primitive overall
concept for both the human and the serpent lady. So for this reason, as I was working
on this illustration I really wanted to show an environment that would help
emphasize the nature of both these characters. So I actually placed them in more of a forest-like
setting, to help emphasize this. Now as the snake lady
is actually stalking her prey I wanted to have her resemble somewhat of a real life
creature so I took inspiration from the Boa Constrictor which in certain
cases depending on where it lives and its habitat actually does tend to attack its prey
from trees or if its in the swamp lands or anything where it can hide in the
water, will ambush its prey there. So by using this as inspiration I really wanted to make
the snake lady more of an ambush predator. Now , how would you ambush
a human? For me , the best way to do this would be obviously to have very high trees
that are high up in the canopy, because it would provide her with
more camoflage. Which also allowed me to choose a color pallet which allowed her to essentially
mostly blend in. Not entirely because I don't want her to blend
in so you can't see her because that would defy the purpose of the painting if you couldn't
see the character. But it did give me some general ideas of what
to work with, when I was working with her color pallet. Now because I wanted to have
her in the trees but I also wanted to show the human that was being
hunted by her, I needed to show a more upward shot. So I chose a very extreme angle for
this drawing. Something else that I did however is , I actually
rotated my entire canvas to make sure that it had a more dynamic angle. So the general
angle is more unsettling. So it shows the dire nature of whats actually
occuring. By slanting the shot , or the camera angle for this painting , like I said , it
tends to give a more unnerving presence. You'll often see this in, this technique used
in paintings and illustrations , but it's probably more prominent in video. The simple
reason being that its a great way to unsettle the audience in a scene. So I used
the same very technique in my illustration, just to help show the dire nature of the human's
plight because he is essentially going to be hunted down by this creature.
Now unlike the previous version I did not want to necessarily make her ugly looking,
just cause' I didn't see the need for this. Yes she could use her beauty to attract males
and into her trap, but that was not necessarily the design perspective I wanted to take. She's
more neutral in appearance, she's not overly gorgeous or anything like
that. But she's also not, like, terrifying, so she doesn't have like these really crumbly
limbs for climbing and stuff. But she does have claws, she does have certain
appealing aspects to her, so I was trying to essentially give somewhat of that aspect
but but not entirely a more beautiful appearance to her. So as you can
see I'm working on the face for the male character who's going to be hunted. Now as I'm working
on this , I'm really trying to force the perspective in every element
that I'm using in this painting. So what this means is, I have to look at a lot of reference
material , I have to do a lot of sketches on the side that you don't see
me do. Just to try and figure out how to draw these angles. Something else I'm also using
is, I'm also using my mirror on the side of me as I'm working. I tend to do that
when I need a lot more reference material, and it tends to be easier just to essentially
pose out my hand or look at the side of my face as I'm trying to draw these elements.
Now because of the extreme angle on this, I couldn't do that entirely so I did have
to look on youtube for video footage, as well as google images , just to make sure
I had enough material to be able to get the angles of the nose correct, and the foreshortening
of the general face. Now, this overall painting took about five
hours to do, so it wasn't a very long painting, but there was a lot of technical aspects that
required some preliminary work in order to get done correctly. So the research
for this took a little bit longer than normal. I was constantly referring to my reference
material, my book section , cause' I have a giant resource on that. All this
helped me actually paint this illustration. As you may have noticed I actually decided
not to draw the spear in the character's hand. The main reason for this is that I wanted
to make him look more vulnerable as a character, so by removing the spear it made it look like
he wasn't expecting to be ambushed. But at the same time, he knows that something's
not right in the forest, so he does look somewhat unnerved. So he's not completely relaxed,
hes still, on the edge because he doesn't know whats troubling him but something
is troubling him about his environment. So right now I'm just starting on adding some
of the details for the snake woman. I will leave the face 'till almost the last
element to her. Mainly because I was just trying to figure out just how beautiful to
make her, whether or not I wanted to make her
more animalistic. Make her look more foriegn, and by taking those elements I decided to
make her in between the two, I didn't want her to have , like I said before , too much
of a beautiful appearance, also I didn't want to make her too ugly either. So as you can
see I'm just adding essentially a more primitive weapon in her hand, although she's
technically able to strangle her prey like a Boa Constictor, I did not want that to be
the only method that she used for hunting. Because I did want her to have some ability
to think , like a human , cause she was part human. So by adding a weapon it shows some
form of intelligence, because most animals are not able to create weapons.
As far as I know , humans are the only ones that make knives and spears, but some animals
in the animal kingdom are able to use tools, so in this case I definetly wanted
to show that she had some cognitive ability. So by adding a very primitive weapon , it
gives a small incling as to that. Just working on the lighting. You will see in the final
image * did I did quite a few changes , and those are
just essentially adding and subtracting tribal tattoos to the character and increasing the
shadows and the highlights on both characters. So as in previous , the past couple weeks,
I won't be able to accept new requests. I will be instituting a voting system later
on, once I've done the current requests that I've
committed to I will start devoting process for those. So thank you guys very much for
watching, and I hope to see you guys soon. So thank you and take care .