September MOTM: The Blooms of Death - painting process video // nsfw

download the attached file to watch the process video of my blooms of death painting!

after first establishing the pose and proportions, i got to work detailing the shapes and decor of the monster's body. using my concept sketch as reference for the various carvings was even more necessary than usual, but now that i was making a more polished piece i also ended up elaborating some of the details. drawing geometric and angular shapes is not my forte (i do better with organic forms) but the withered nature of his stone body and the rounded corners made it easier.

i drew a lineart that's pretty thin and precise, but the semi-visible sketch layers beneath add a sense of softness and three-dimensionality. after cleaning up the sketch layers, i blocked in the base colours (on different layers for different areas / body parts) and started adding gradients. the fade from yellow to dark orange adds depth the mass of marigolds and looks more interesting than if it had been the same golden hue all over. in a similar vein, all the stone parts of the monster's body are technically the same turquoise colour, but adding a darker green gradient to his lower arms, tail tip, and head helps differentiate these areas from the paler hip and thigh that they overlap.

i set a new, semi-transparent layer to "multiply" and started rendering the shapes of his body in more detail. i shaded his lithic limbs, added small but deep shadows to the cracks in the stone, and also started colouring the marigolds. as you can see i never drew a lineart for the flowers, because i could make them look more vivid by painting them more freely -- creating a nice contrast between soft florals and hard stone. at the same time i was working on the human, rendering his skin and hair in much my usual way.

as much as i struggle with geometric shapes, i really enjoy painting stone. it basically felt like i was sculpting the monster's lithic body, by adding pale highlights as well as deeper and deeper shadows. using the 'gloaming' and 'charcoal' brushes helped create a stone-like texture, and patches of irregular brush strokes here and there kept the "armour" from looking too smooth.

the vivid colours also helped brighten up my dark autumn days, and a couple of special effects made them truly pop. i set one layer to "colour burn" and airbrushed a warm blue-green to the monster's hands, head, and tail; next i added a pale turquoise gradient to his legs and hip, and set that layer to "overlay." both these layers are hidden for parts of the following process, though -- i turned them back on after i was done polishing the details. to that end i started working on top of the lineart, adding tiny highlights and shadows and refining the shapes of the carved stone.

as for the flowers i used soft brush strokes to define the marigolds and indicate a multitude of petals, but resisted the temptation to add too much detail, because it could have easily turned the florals into a confusing mess. the marigold bed that the human is laying on is even more loosely rendered, because i didn't want this background element to draw attention away from the characters themselves.

i'm personally a huge fan of the contrast in texture -- perhaps because i like stimming on both rocks and plants, lol. i also like how, towards the end of the process, parts of the thin lineart had become secondary to the shadows and highlights that create the impression of carved stone. after adding even more details (not least the mess between the human's legs) and turning the special effect layers back on, the piece was finished! but let me know if there's anything about the process you'd like me to elaborate on, i'm happy to answer any questions.

// art + characters © me.