Drawing Illustrations from Ill Chances and Strange Fates

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

Some of you may know about my solo fanfiction, "Ill Chances and Strange Fates." It is primarily a fic focusing on Maedhros and my OC Aranya and how they fell in love. (And I will start posting it on here as soon as I get a few chapters edited.) But anyway, I wanted to have some illustrations to accompany the work. Here's the first one, which I finished a few weeks ago while I was in Boston.

Without spoiling too much, the context of this scene is that he was trying to practice a dance for a ball he has to go to, and he asked her to help him practice. They're in the habit of meeting secretly in the woods. After this experience, Aranya, who is a healer, can never stand to dance with the unskilled dancers in her village again! People tell Aranya she's too judgy. She just has good taste.

I can't wait for you all to get to know Aranya and her dynamic with Maitimo, but that will have to wait till after I start publishing IC&SF. I will link it here when I do start.

Here are a few technical points about the drawing. First of all, I hope you'll agree with me that it's a massive improvement over my last two digital drawings (here and here). I still have a lot to learn about digital art, but I feel I've come a long way already. Here are some things I learned which contributed to the improvement in my digital art style:

• Using a pencil brush instead of a pen brush for line art, as it is more textured and looks more natural.
• Using a much more muted color scheme than what I normally choose on the color wheel. Most of these colors are close to the grey zone. In fact, the greens you see here are actually greyish yellows!
• Using much thinner line art than I normally do, but still providing lots of line weight variation.
• Coloring the lineart. Even erasing it in places.
• Not using too much contrast or detail in contouring Maitimo's face. I've learned the simpler I keep his face, the better.
• Making use of a variety of brushes, such as watercolor brushes, to add texture. Before, I was mostly just using the pen and airbrush.
• Making use of a few different layer modes. For example, I used Soft Light for the beams of light. And I added a layer on Overlay mode with a low opacity to make the colors more vibrant. For example, I colored in a vibrant purple all over Maitimo's hair and navy blue all over Aranya's hair, and that Overlay mode subtly blended the colors in so it's an undertone and not an overtone.
• Doing the entire drawing on top of a green canvas rather than a blank one.

I learned all that stuff through watching tutorial videos and copying/tracing a few pictures I liked. Maybe some other time I'll post about that, but it could be an entire essay of its own. (Besides, the creator of the art I copied would probably get mad-- but copying artwork you like is the only way to learn sometimes.)

Also, the most difficult thing about this drawing was probably Maitimo's shirt. I wanted it to have a semi-sheer effect (because reasons 👀) and it took a ton of trial and error to get it to look decent. I still think it could be better, but it's good enough for now.

I'm locking this thread because I plan on making multiple illustrations for the fic, and I don't want them all to get lost in messages. Please post your comments here.

Hope you enjoyed it and looking forward to your comments!

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

I've finally finished the illustration for Chapter 1 of Ill Chances and Strange Fates, which you can read here! To get the full sense of the meaning behind the picture, you'll want to read the chapter if you haven't done so already.

I think I'm getting faster at digital drawing, because this "only" took me 10 hours instead of the 12 hours spent on the last drawing. (It helps that I already had a sketch on physical paper, whereas in the last drawing, I made the sketch in the ibisPaint app. Still, even when I'm tracing a physical drawing, it takes some time to make adjustments and clean up the lines.

I think what I'm most proud of here (aside from cute lil baby Amras) is the way the lighting creates a mood. Aranya, with her cool toned coloring and blue robes, fits in harmoniously with the sterile, serene, icy blues of the healing halls. Whereas Maitimo and Amras look totally out of place with their warm tones and dark reds. Maitimo especially feels extremely awkward and out of place in this moment, so it fits!

I'm also very proud of the background. Originally, I made a different background, with a curtained window above Aranya's head, but I just didn't like it. It was hard to tell what the background was supposed to be, and I felt it was distracting and made the picture look too cluttered. I like this much better. The faint gold highlights indicate Laurelin is shining outside, but the blue curtains are diffusing that light. I also am glad the background is vague and the space behind Aranya doesn't seem too cluttered, yet you can faintly see a bed and a window.

One thing that really helped this picture was use of the Overlay mode. Now that I've figured out how to use Overlay, it is a necessity for me in any digital picture! It really makes the colors pop. Basically, what I do is figure out what the undertone of the color should be (for example, Aranya's face has purplish-magenta undertones, and her hair has blue undertones) so I generously apply those colors on an Overlay layer. Then, I adjust the opacity to a reasonable level so the colors don't look too crazy.

So you can see what I mean, here's the picture with the Overlay layer turned off:

And here it is with Overlay on 100% opacity:

I keep it on 42% opacity for the finished picture.

Also, poor Maitimo hasn't figured out how to take care of his curly hair yet! That vaguely wavy, frizzy hair is basically how mine looks if I brush it dry and don't do a curl routine. Eventually, he'll figure out how to get them looking nice like in the picture of him and Aranya dancing.

Hope you enjoy this, and please leave any comments in the Discussion thread. I look forward to your comments!