These are two commissions I’ve been requested to draw. Both digitally, but I do hope to create and post something in a traditional medium soon.
Neither drawings are too special nor detailed, but I did want to share a bit of my process and also track my progress as time goes on. I still have a lot of work and practice to do.
The first drawing I started by sketching out the general shape and proportions in red, and then putting in large shapes of strong shadows to immediately capture some depth. Afterwards I just kept putting in various shades and shapes, and slowly connecting them as I did so until it was finished. The most difficult part was, in both drawings, the camo, but moreso in the second one. I didn’t try to get it exactly right, but rather improvised to not fall into the trap of perfectionism and then making it seem fake as a result. I kept in the red of the sketch in both for a bit of style.
As for the second drawing, I had the same approach for the sketch, but didn’t have the same strong shadows to work with to achieve depth, but I rather needed to focus more on gradients and folding of fabrics. For example, I darkened the right, our left, sleeve in the way of a gradient to fake depth which wasn’t in the original photograph, and I did the same with the boots and pants. The variations in the gear helped a lot with the monotony of the lighting, and the shapes are more interesting than in the first drawing. The camo is also much more detailed, but also monotone, so I didn’t try to capture too much of the detail but rather the general look of it too not give too much fuzz for the eye.
As for the backgrounds; I kept them as simple as I possibly could because they weren’t requested and it also gives a stylized feeling to the figures, to make up a slightly pretentious excuse.
