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Hello everybody, this is Yasmeen from Yarkspiri Fantasy Art . com.
I'm just showing you a quick preview before we start today.
This illustration was a more complicated piece in comparison to what I normally work on.
In this case I was working on a vampire lord vs a vampire hunter battle scene that was going to take place.
This piece required a lot more forethought on how I was going to go about staging these characters, the composition and layout.
I was working through what angle would best portray all of these elements within the piece.
I went through quite a few renditions, most of which I will not be showing you guys simply because there was too many.
I did a combination of both traditional and digital thumbnails in order to get the correct perspective for this illustration.
This is the digital thumbnail that I did for this drawing tutorial.
I'm just figuring out the basic composition in this drawing.
I'm working out how I'm going to place the characters within this scene.
I'm trying to get a rough idea of the lighting.
I'm just throwing out ideas to try and figure out how I'm going to stage this so that it looks like an impending battle.
I'm looking to find the best lighting for this scene.
Doing this quick digital thumbnail allows me to really focus on the lighting which is a really important aspect in this type of illustration.
This thumbnail took around 15 minutes to do where as most of my hand drawn thumbnails only took about 5 to 10 minutes each.
I actually did close to around 10 to 15 thumbnails for this piece before I actually finalized it and began working on the illustration.
Although I'd had settled with a certain pose in the thumbnail stage, I did want to show a more dynamic pose for the character.
I reworked the pose to make it more dynamic and the twist allowed me to show more than just the back of the character.
I personally find that showing the back of the character tends to be a little bit boring to I try to avoid it when I can.
This also allows me to show a really interesting twist in the figure as well.
As you can see I've started figuring out some of the background elements and I created a new layer in order to do so.
I'm just working really rough because of the distance that those object will be in, you won't see most of the detail.
I don't really need to fully flesh out all of the details because you won't see these anyway.
Since the vampire hunter is close to the foreground element, it is really important that I detail out this character.
Figuring out the costume design and the really dynamic pose, all of those aspects are really important for this.
I did want to take a different approach from the vampire hunters that you normally see.
I created an almost military type man who was forced in this unwanted situation.
I referenced some revolution combat uniforms, renaissance period clothes since both had very interesting clothing designs.
I did still want to add my own twist to this more traditional clothing designs.
I added the front pocket and removed the sleeves so that I could show some more of the characters muscle structure.
I removed the sleeves to help show that this was a battle that had been going on for a while.
This character isn't intended to be in the best shape physically and it helps to show this in the clothing.
Fighting constantly does take a tole on the body
I'm just figuring the out the pose right now for the vampire lord.
I'm just making sure that it's a bit more dynamic than what I currently have drawn.
I'm just really fleshing out some of the background elements so that fit with the overall theme that I want to show.
As you've seen me do in the past, I'm just applying a simple texture to my canvas with my brush.
I also lower the opacity of my line-art so I can fully flesh out the details and begin hinting at the light and dark areas.
I'm doing this to so that I can turn of the line layer as soon as possible.
By turning off the line layer I'm able to really work out the details of this drawing.
I've just turned off the line-art and I'm now working on adding the basic shadows and begin fully fleshing out the additional details.
By taking this approach I'm able to better focus on the character that is closest to the viewer.
This is definitely something you want to concentrate on since he would have the most amount of detail.
I've just started working on the pleats for the clothing.
I'm just hinting at detail and seeing how little I can add in to show the most information.
All the while I'm still trying to show the right amount of structure so that the drawing reads well.
This drawing was spanned out over the course of tree days.
I did initial sketches but didn't find them to be satisfactory enough so I put it aside.
It wasn't until yesterday night after work that I sketched out a pose that was good enough for the vampire hunter and lord.
It wasn't until today that I had enough time to begin painting the character.
I hadn't drawn too many characters with facial hair so I wanted to give this character a very angular beard style.
The facial hair fits with the type of clothing that he's wearing and helps portray the characters story.
When I was working out this idea, I made some mental notes on how this character would behave and how to portray his character.
I did want to have a character that although he's part of the military, he has a higher ranking look to him.
It was for this reason that the character has a very well shaven look to himself.
Although he hasn't seen any actual battle but he is aware of the strategy and uses this to confront the threat his encountering.
In this case the main threat is the vampire lord.
I try to keep all of these aspects in mind as I'm working on the drawing.
Unlike other aspects of the clothing design, I wanted the cloak to be representative of the vampire lords wings.
In this rendition, I'm not drawing wings on the character, I'm making the cloak give the impression it's alive and part of the vampire lord.
I rendered the cloak so that it would have an almost bat like quality to it.
The cloak is almost to well shaped at any moment including when it's in the distance.
For the background elements I kept it really simple and don't go through too much detail because of the distance from the viewer.
It isn't necessary to put all that much detail since you won't see that detail from that distance.
Reducing the detail in background elements really helps portray more depth to a piece.
Background elements are intended to support the overall piece and can't take away from the foreground or focal objects.
Otherwise they aren't doing what they are supposed to do.
I'm nearly done the grey scale portion of this drawing.
Once I had the initial drawing figured out, it only took about 4 to 5 hours to complete.
It was the composition that was extremely difficult because there's two characters.
I have to keep in mind that the composition is adequate to showcase the two characters within the scene.
Once the composition was established it was just a matter of fully rendering it out to the best of my abilities.
So that it looked as realistic and appealing as I could make it.
At this point I actually realized that I had forgotten to add the stake so I just added it into the characters hand.
I really wanted to keep these characters weapons as minimalist as possible.
I wanted this fight to be something that this character was not expecting.
This character wasn't expecting to encounter a Dracula type character.
He was maybe just on a routine mission, trying to keep his troops alive before they encountered this creature which attacked them.
He wasn't prepared for this confrontation.
I included the garlic in the chain that supporting the cross because it's his faith that giving him strength.
It's giving him something to fight for and it acts as a focal point from which he's able to focus on the battle that is ahead.
He's only weapon is a stake in which he's carved out by hand from maybe a post or a branch that he's found along the way.
I kept the weapons very simple because this isn't a character that went into this expecting to kill a vampire.
I wanted this to be a threat that was unexpected which is why I approached the character design in this fashion.
An important thing to keep in mind while I work on the shadows, I need to diffuse the background elements.
Otherwise the shadows were too clear given the type of perspective involved.
This is the finalized illustration. It was something that was really pleasant to work on.
This was also approaching a slightly different subject matter than what I typically work on.
Which made this very intriguing.
I hope you guys enjoyed this and hope to see you guys soon.
Please leave a comment bellow. I do like reading your comments whether they are good or bad.
I hope to see you guys soon. Thank you and take care.