My Illustration Project

I had been drawing for about 5 years, driven by a passion that continued to scream at me to improve. Through this journey, i made a lot of friends interested in art as well. I had also studied many artists, hoping to gain a new technique to help.

This is Polemos, a character i designed. This project was created to test out different rendering styles, while also to study lighting. Some of my characters dons a flower that replaces their left eye. Polemos is inspired by the Chrysanthemum, a flower used by people to grieve those who have died in a war. I had spent nearly 20 hours on this, to the point it crashed my phone twice.

What i learnt: I learnt how to render from different angles, and played around with lighting. Additionally, i learnt to draw from different angles as well.

The Process

As you can see, this was the sketch. I challenged myself to not use a reference, until i got to the full body sketch. That was when i pulled out a reference to my old drawing, and enhanced it better to give her a more confident stance. Using boxes to make the body had helped to give structure to the artwork.

From this, i learnt that rendering hair over and over again was actually quite painful. That alone was the reason i spent 20 hours, and was too tired to even work on rendering clothing.

Looking back, i do wish i had worked on the clothing. The rendering felt a little too flat, and it didn’t seem too appealing (even if it isn’t the focus, i am a perfectionist to an extent.) . I also wished i had done a little better on the composition, since it seemed a little bit boring. Additionally, i had hoped that the background would turn out okay, but it was kind of boring. However, I do like the lighting i did.