November MOTM: of the starry night - painting process video // nsfw

download the attached .mov file to watch the process video for the november MOTM painting!

the focal point of this design is the starry pattern on the cloth- or fin-like elements flowing from the monster's shoulders and hips. i wanted to show it off and give myself plenty of real-estate to fill with stylised yellow stars, as described in the design commentary. i've been wanting to draw a pose like this for a while now, and realised it would be a perfect fit for this month's painting, since it would provide a nice frontal view of the star-speckled elements. it's a tricky pose to draw though, and i had to tweak the proportions and redraw certain areas before i was happy with the sketch. posing the monster's fore-shortened arms and the hands grabbing his lover's thighs was especially challenging. some parts of the anatomy still look a bit off to me, but that's okay. you live and you learn!

as i was sketching i paid particular attention to posing the 'fins' in a aesthetically pleasing (almost symmetrical) way. i didn't bother plotting out the stars and left the astrolabe a blank circle for the time being, because it would be easier to figure it out from scratch later on. the shapes of this piece are relatively simple and straightforward, without any intricate details or complex elements. but i still went through a few sketch layers before moving on to the lineart. so far, the process should look pretty familiar, with the gradual refining of the sketch and the relatively thin linework.

the way i went about the colouring was simultaneously the same as always and somewhat different -- i used the same brushes and methods, but started out in greyscale. normally, deciding exactly which colours to use and rendering each different nuance is one of my favourite parts of creating art. but the colour palette of this monster is supposed to be pretty desaturated, with the artsy yellow stars on muted grey-green-blue. i figured the easiest way to achieve that effect was to render the monster in greyscale and then add green-blue undertones through various layer effects. this approach would also help ensure that the palette didn't end up too vibrant, if that makes sense. out of convenience, i decided to render his human lover in much the same way.

i used separate layers for their bodies and each pair of 'fins,' so it would be easy to work on one area at a time. after applying some large gradients i shaded and hightlighted and 'sculpted' the characters with lighter and darker hues of grey, but didn't obsess too much about details, since i knew i would polish the piece later on anyway.

once i was happy with the illusion of three-dimensionality, i started adding colour by trying out various layer effects, such as 'overlay' and 'colour dodge.' for the starry monster i mostly used various hues of blue and greenish turquoise, and experimented with exactly how transparent each 'special effect' layer should be. it took some trial and error but eventually i hit the sweet spot, in terms of both saturation and contrast between light and dark hues. note how his body has a warmer undertone than the 'fins;' this, along with the differences in value, ensures that the design elements don't just blur together.

now for the fun part - the stars! i first distributed the larger stars of the classic shape across the 'fins' and then added smaller stars and some tiny dots. they blend into the colour of the fins towards the edges because it looked slightly more natural that way.

it also took some experimentation to figure out the background; i wanted it to be fairly dark, but the fins should still stand out against it. as discussed in the design commentary i wanted to avoid using certain hues of deep blue and twinkling white stars for the monster himself -- but that didn't mean i couldn't use that look for the backdrop instead. i was also all too happy to draw some constellation shapes, since they're so aesthetically pleasing. to make the characters stand out against the background i added a glowing 'outline' around their silhouette, creating a pretty neat effect.

at this point i started adding details and refining areas that needed some polish, like the hands and genitalia. it was also about time to finish the astrolabe; they can be very detailed but i needed to simplify the shapes a bit, so it wouldn't look too cluttered. after that i simply kept adding details and cleaning up the colouring until i felt in my heart of hearts that the painting was finished - aka when i got sick of nitpicking tiny details that nobody else but me would ever notice ...

as always, comment below if you have any questions!

// art + characters © me.