October MOTM: the Void - painting process // nsfw

here's the process pack for october's MOTM painting, featuring a void monster and their human lover. download the .zip below to access 13 pngs and 1 gif!

this painting was destined to be a bit different from my usual stuff, since (as discussed in the design commentary) i wanted the void monster to look like a person-shaped hole in reality, a monster-shaped window into the void. this meant that their body wouldn't have much definition or form, i wouldn't be sculpting the shape of them by shading and highlighting their limbs and muscles in my usual way. rather i intended them to be a dark silhouette without lineart or rendering, coloured in with a space-like effect that doesn't follow the presumed shapes of their body, with only a few hints at threedimensionality.

in a way the rough sketch has more form and anatomical detail than the finished product, since i still wanted to make sure that their anatomy made sense, even if most of that detail wouldn't survive past even the lineart stage. i decided to have fun with the pose and make their human partner very flexible. the position plays on the idea of 'sinking into the void' but in a most lovely way, having the human arch back into the embrace of the monster's tendrils and kind of start to sink into their torso. 

the lineart itself is pretty simple, and most of it basically disappeared as i filled the void monster in with black. i locked the transparency of that layer of solid colour and started working on the space effect, using a variety of brushes to emulate stars and galaxies and nebulas. first i added cloudy patches of grey to the solid blackness, as well as subtle toothbrush-like sprinkling. in order to make the pose easier to understand i made their thighs a bit threedimensional, and also adjusted the value/contrast of their arm vis-a-vis their tail. next i added some bigger and brighter dots, making them shine by way of a blurry white overlay. however i kept some parts of their body entirely dark, to create a visually pleasing contrast between brighter areas and cosmic voids with no details. for the sake of convenience i kept everything greyscale, because i didn't want the void monster to be too colourful and i intended to add pink-purple-blue overlays to their body later on.

i added a simple background, including the monster's strange halo, some plants to give the impression of an odd meadow overgrown with white grass and flowers, and a pattern of stylised black stars because it felt appropriate to the aesthetic. it's spooky season, after all, so i took the opportunity to make the picture a bit more witchy. on that note i added a purple tint to the background, as well as the aforementioned overlays that brought some spacey colour to the void monster's body. 

last of all i tweaked some details, and then it was finished. to be honest, working on this was a bit of a mindfuck because it didn't take quite as long as many of my other pieces. it makes sense, of course--the monster's whole body is basically just a textured area, without highlights, shadows, definition, or details. creating the space-like effect went much quicker than rendering fur and sculpting the threedimensionality of a beefy bod. but whenever i finish something quicker than i'm 'used to' i find myself mildly anxious, asking 'is it really finished' or 'did i rush it' and such. i kept at it for a bit, adding details and refining the edges, but eventually i realised that yeah, it *is* finished. there was nothing more i wanted to do with it, nothing more i wanted to improve.

the lesson here is that it's not the time put into a piece that determines the quality or the 'finishedness.' a 30 hour painting is not automatically better than a 5 hour one. how fast you finish a piece depends on a lot of things, such as which style you're using, whether the character's design is complex or simple, if everything goes smoothly or if you run into any problems along the way, if the composition and lighting is straightforward or complicated, not to mention whether you're in the groove or not. there's no reason to force yourself to put a 'minimum amount of hours' into a painting; when it's done, it's done. i've realised the importance of reminding myself of this, every once in a while, so i don't get stuck overworking a painting even though i already loved it at an earlier stage. in fact i've been finishing artwork faster than usual lately and i don't know if it's because i'm using more efficient methods, if i've become quicker at doing art, if i'm simply on a roll, or any combination thereof. in either case, i'm loving it.

// art + characters © me.