While playing some games such as Dark Souls 3, which is easily one of my favourite series. Upon completing the game while wearing one of my favourite armour and weapon sets which came back from Dark Souls 1 which you acquire by killing a boss called Artorias in the only Dark Souls 1 expansion and loved by many Dark Souls fans for his lore and story within the game and the epic fast paced battle and sad slow paced music.
Battle music theme :
So after completing the game I decided to draw and paint one of my most loved bosses so i went back into Dark Souls 3 and took a screenshot of a pose I wanted to draw and paint him in along side another image of a character called Garo in the anime Garo The Animation for a similar pose I want to use.
I have also got a mood board of other images of his armour and weapon that he used to look into detail when drawing him.
So first off I started by sketching out the pose I wanted to use combining it with the other pose that i have got. At first the the waist size looked a bit too big which I miss interrupted the size of it because of the cloak that kind of covers around his face down to his torso.
After fixing the waist size I then proceeded to add more detail and refine the rough outline that I done before.
At this point I had thought that the outline drawing was good enough for me to start painting maybe because I thought that it looked good enough for my standards but then I re-looked back at his official 3D model and concept art that I realised and decided that it wasn't good enough for a games company if I only thought that it looked good enough for me as it pleased my eyes only and comparing it other top notch quality characters and concept art/designs.
So I then refined it more by putting more detail like replacing the belt , left arm arm and shoulder pad, legs and really giving it the amount of detail it deserves as an epic boss that i love.
Blocked in the base colours.
Added a natural source of light and started to shade and paint more using the hard round pressure point brush to quickly block in the darker and lighter pieces of shade within the painting. I then proceeded to then use a soft round pressure point brush to blend in the shading while using 20%/60%/80% Grey with an opacity at 40% and flow of 40% as well to slowly build up the amount of shade needed to give a smooth look to it instead of a hard blocky shade. I have also used pure 100% white and black at some parts to give it a very dramatic shading or lighting which isn't really realistic but makes it look cool none the less.
I found using the soft round pressure brush at the opacity of 40% and flow of 40% very effective as I have found shading quite hard before hand and also got frustrated at the fact that I couldn't shade properly. This could be because I couldn't quite find the right way of shading which I find the best and most comfortable method to use for myself comparing it to the other shading methods that I have used previously. I have used the 40% opacity and 40% flow before as I have mentioned before in one of my previous posts although I was using a hard round brush back then I think and didn't have all the colours of a certain section on the same layer; which then caused things to not look right or not look as effective as it does in here.
After finishing painting it I added a chain mail texture to some of his armour which he has in his official model and pose I used as well as adding a bit of a black kinda goo dripping down one of his hands as in the game is he consumed by the abyss which corrupted him which gave him a very unique fighting style,
I then added a new layer and used 100% white at a opacity of 20% and slowly went over some of the armour parts and following the natural light direction to give it a very nice shine and to adjust to the colour of silver which i found fairly reasonable to achieve through out the entire painting process. It may not be the exact colour of silver/ metallic shine it would realistically give off but I'm quite happy with it.
Some very small added lines of effects.
Then added slight shadow background to give more depth to it so it doesn't look like his standing on thin air.
I am very happy with the end result although I may have over done it with the amount of 100% black used for the dark areas which could be fixed if it was done realistically according to the natural light direction and defiantly one of my best pieces of work that I have done so far.
I may also add a proper background to it when i get the time too.
I may also add a proper background to it when i get the time too.
