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cimoreneHere's the slightly more detailed babble about the design & execution of the Mage Carmela portrait I made for her birthday.
Carmela the Mage, 25 May 2013, mixed media on paper, A3
On Tumblr
This portrait is the big sister companion to the Tripletych I painted her siblings last Christmas, in which the noobs are a half-elven ranger, ninja assasin and Viking berserker on a quest. (That post was here.) The idea was that her character should belong to the same universe, with the character being slightly more mature/powerful/cool because she's the big sister, without being "better". This is why I decided to make her a magic user. (She's also not really the fighting type.)
I made a lot of rather undirected sketches and looked into the kinds of outfits worn by mages, priestesses, and healers in RPGs. Again her dad provided the key by suggesting Danaerys in Qarth :).
I'm a huge fan of Danaerys's outfits in Qarth. Two silk tabards with a subtle pattern make the main part, one lilac and one a pale aqua, and Dany wears them with a leather collar and attached bra and a gold filigree collar and bra piece, together or separately. I removed the metal bra because, well, C is only 9. The silver short undertunic is borrowed from Sif's costume in Thor, however (Dany wears this with a leather split skirt that hits a bit below the knee, but I didn't want the outfit to appear to be a dress). Filigree is hard to draw, so the design of the gold bits is inspired by She-Ra and the Crystal Castle (she likes my She-Ra DVDs!). For the background I used reference photos of the walls of Byzantium.
For the modern touches in this portrait I chose Monster High, which seems to be her current fannish obsession (it's the insignia in the cabochon on the chest piece), and this rainbow leopard patterned scarf that I've caught her playing dressup with several times (it's the waist girdle).
The previous portraits have been acrylic paintings on board and the actual reason that I didn't do that with this one is that I'm less confident of my skill with acrylic paints than with colored pencils, and I was under quite a time crunch by the time I got a full-size final sketch. Also it was weirdly hard for me to get a facial likeness of big C. (Most people are not that difficult for me!) I was worried I wouldn't be able to replicate it on the canvas, which is harder to erase from, so the figure is mostly Prismacolor and Derwent colored pencils layered with marker. The background is also pencil and marker, but layered with watercolor. I love mixed media, but I haven't done a lot of layering with marker and Prismacolor before, so I wasn't completely sure how it would look. I'm quite pleased, though! And really glad that I saved time by doing the grass with watercolor first because coloring that entire space in Prismacolor alone would have taken three times as long probably. The combination also makes it more dimensional, kind of. Definitely will be mixing these particular media more in future.
Carmela the Mage, 25 May 2013, mixed media on paper, A3
On Tumblr
This portrait is the big sister companion to the Tripletych I painted her siblings last Christmas, in which the noobs are a half-elven ranger, ninja assasin and Viking berserker on a quest. (That post was here.) The idea was that her character should belong to the same universe, with the character being slightly more mature/powerful/cool because she's the big sister, without being "better". This is why I decided to make her a magic user. (She's also not really the fighting type.)
I made a lot of rather undirected sketches and looked into the kinds of outfits worn by mages, priestesses, and healers in RPGs. Again her dad provided the key by suggesting Danaerys in Qarth :).
I'm a huge fan of Danaerys's outfits in Qarth. Two silk tabards with a subtle pattern make the main part, one lilac and one a pale aqua, and Dany wears them with a leather collar and attached bra and a gold filigree collar and bra piece, together or separately. I removed the metal bra because, well, C is only 9. The silver short undertunic is borrowed from Sif's costume in Thor, however (Dany wears this with a leather split skirt that hits a bit below the knee, but I didn't want the outfit to appear to be a dress). Filigree is hard to draw, so the design of the gold bits is inspired by She-Ra and the Crystal Castle (she likes my She-Ra DVDs!). For the background I used reference photos of the walls of Byzantium.
For the modern touches in this portrait I chose Monster High, which seems to be her current fannish obsession (it's the insignia in the cabochon on the chest piece), and this rainbow leopard patterned scarf that I've caught her playing dressup with several times (it's the waist girdle).
The previous portraits have been acrylic paintings on board and the actual reason that I didn't do that with this one is that I'm less confident of my skill with acrylic paints than with colored pencils, and I was under quite a time crunch by the time I got a full-size final sketch. Also it was weirdly hard for me to get a facial likeness of big C. (Most people are not that difficult for me!) I was worried I wouldn't be able to replicate it on the canvas, which is harder to erase from, so the figure is mostly Prismacolor and Derwent colored pencils layered with marker. The background is also pencil and marker, but layered with watercolor. I love mixed media, but I haven't done a lot of layering with marker and Prismacolor before, so I wasn't completely sure how it would look. I'm quite pleased, though! And really glad that I saved time by doing the grass with watercolor first because coloring that entire space in Prismacolor alone would have taken three times as long probably. The combination also makes it more dimensional, kind of. Definitely will be mixing these particular media more in future.
