#yeah i'm not finishing that background so i might as well post the rough sketch

[xvlvxvr]

August doodle challenge!

So, yeah, I'm gonna challenge myself to draw more this month. I started on the 3rd, so boo for me for not beginning since the 1st of the month. Anywho.

Rules!

Workdays (Mon-Fri), I sketch one doodle per day. Pencil. Doesn't matter how rough it ends up. And I can only focus on that one.

Saturdays, I get to pick one of the five I end up with, and clean it up. I have the weekend to do so and finish the inks.

Last weekend of the month, I pick one of those four lineart drawings to complete.

If I complete a doodle for the day, and still have spare time to draw, I can either a) go back and flesh out a previous day's sketch, or b) start on the inking process early.

By the end of the month, I should have 23 doodles (because I missed two days, although I'm allowing myself to try and catch up only for this week), 4 inked drawings and 1 that's completed, colors and background and all. And, if all goes well, I might do it again next month!

(All work will be posted here and on my deviantArt, probably uploaded on the weekends.)

[parkissat]

My Art Process (sort of, for painterly portraits)

So a long time ago @iartsometimes asked me if I could make a post about my art process and here it is finally! I'm not really sure how to explain it in an accurate or interesting way since a) I didn't save as many progress pics as I should have and b) my process isn't always exactly the same every time, but I'll do my best to describe the main ways in which I make this sort of art most of the time. And I'm using the process for this drawing as example.

This was a relatively very quick one so it's not as detailed as some others but the basic principles still apply. For practically all my art on this blog I was using at least a couple of different brushes but nowadays I'm only using one of those, set at 50% oppacity. I always start by just filling in the background with the main color that stands out to me from the bg of the ref itself, and then I lay down some more basic big blotches of color here and there to get a sense of the overall colors and values (light and dark areas).

It doesn't have to be totally accurate to the ref but I just take my cues from there so it fits well in the end and also because I don't like to start drawing on a blank/white canvass.

Then on a separate layer I just start blocking a general shape of whatever part of the subject grabs my attention the most, so sometimes I might actually start with the clothes if it's a bigger area of solid color, or the hair, but in this case it was the face. And again I just pick a main color to start blocking and then keep blocking dark areas to start getting the shapes before eventually moving on to highlights and other colors (like warm and cold tones).

I never sketch with this kind of drawing where I'm using a ref and find it easier to just paint and slowly make out the shapes and build the details, and I prefer doing it on one layer or as few layers as possible that I'll end up combining into one.

Sometimes I block out the whole overall shape before starting to add the inner shapes and details but in this case for some reason I just felt more like doing it part by part so I did a lot of work on just the head for a while, and then the shirt, and then the jacket, and then the cigarette, but kept going back and forth to all those parts to add and adjust more little details. While I'm doing this I'll often also resize the drawing at least once or twice and move it to where I want.

I usually make colors by just changing them however I need from some color I already put down in the bg or some other part of the painting. Something I really like is color contrast so I often like exaggerating little blocks of warm and cold tones, and I also love just leaving things looking a bit rough around the edges with visible brushstrokes.

So after these one I didn't save any more progress pics I think. I just finished some details everywhere like the top hair, the print on his shirt, some stuff on the jacket and probably his face too. I'm never really completely done with any particular part of a drawing until I decide I'm done with the whole thing.

And then another thing I always do, sometimes during the process of the rest of the painting but other times, like in this case, after I finish the subject, is that I add more detail to the background. I do this on a separate layer and usually it's just adding more colors to make it all flow better with the rest of the drawing, fix anything with the values, and just add some random spots of contrasting colors to make it more interesting by making some big brustrokes and then partially erasing them (though I didn't add the smaller spots so much in this case and left it at bigger adjustments).

After that the only thing left is that I almost always adjust the final colors in all the layers (I usually end up with about 3-5 layers) to make them a bit more intense. Usually I like to make the midtones warmer by increasing the reds or magentas, I make the shadows more blueish, and the highlights more yellow.

Not sure if I mentioned everything I do or if it was cohesive and interesting but yeah I think these are the main "steps" or elements about my portrait painting process. In general, I prefer painting without sketching, focusing on the bigger picture rather than details, leaving things kinda rough and having visible brushstrokes, and play around with bright colors and exaggerated color contrast. And finally here's a little progress gif of all the images above plus the final drawing where you can kinda see it coming together.

Thanks for reading! And thanks Tanya for asking about this!! Hope it was the sort of thing you had in mind XD