embermarke

PROCESS: Portrait from sketch to finish

Here’s my process for my semi-realistic portrait of Tanya. The video’s a bit long–the interesting bits are probably in the first 5 minutes, and the rest is me going back and editing/checking for errors. Because I’m going for a more realistic rendition, I think there’s less room for artistic anatomical liberties (although I definitely still took some), so I needed to be a bit more careful!

Additionally, since I’m inventing, I only have a rough idea of what the image should �...

BEHIND-THE-SCENES: References & Props

Oscar Wilde once wrote, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life". And in this case, it may be true! I wanted to share some stuff that goes on behind-the-scenes when it comes to creating art (and writing). Here's a selection of my real-life references. By virtue of my interests in military history and of course Farewell My Homeland, I’ve acquired a collection of both fun and serious things over the years. I guess some will come in handy during the apocalypse? Anyway, I’m sure yo...

EARLY ACCESS: Realistic Tanya Portrait

Happy New Year everyone! Like the title says, I wanted to try to do a somewhat realistic painting of Tanya. It’s based on one of the expressions I did a couple years back which I’ve included here as well. I’ve been enjoying taking things a little slower during the winter and I wanted to spend some more time on this portrait. But also, because it’s realistic, I think I had less room for “stylization/exaggeration”, so there were definitely a lot of things I needed to tweak to make i...

EARLY ACCESS: Leyendecker holiday study

Happy Holidays everyone! Here’s the finished piece (and a vintage monochrome one)–I think I like how it turned out! Well, at least it was fun to do while listening to some Marlene Dietrich. Thanks again for being so supportive and best wishes for the new year!

WIP: Leyendecker holiday study

It’s that time of the year again where I do a riff off of a Leyendecker piece–so here are the works in progress! I’ve included the original as well. For this one I felt like taking more artistic liberties (for example: pose, colors, degree of render), but it was still interesting to study the original composition. Will be sharing the finished piece soon!

NEW YEAR’S POSTCARDS + Q&A

Happy Holidays lovely patrons! Welcome if you're new!

Can you believe it’s already the middle of December? I wanted to do something fun and thank you all for supporting me here and mail out some prints/postcards for the new year!

So anytime this month, message me and let me know what art you’d like from my gallery: https://www.instagram.com/ember.marke/ I’ll be compiling a list of pieces to print ...

WIP: Jinx

I recently finished Arcane and the art was so amazing!! If you haven't seen it, I totally recommend it--it's definitely one of the most visually beautiful things I've seen in a while. 

Anyway, that got me all inspired. I really like Jinx's character design! Here's a work in progress along with my lineart and base colors. I don't think I'll take this much farther--it's just a matter of cleaning up and details at this point. And oh goodness, the pink background @_@ Idk, I wanted to s...

EARLY ACCESS: Taking aim

The stock jutted into her shoulder. Steady... She took a breath, willed her arms to stop shaking under the weight of the rifle, and exhaled...

Yelena Process

Hello! Here's a quick process video for my recent studies--it's a bit of insight into how I paint! As you see it's not a super clean process, I use a lot of layers and cut/paste to try to capture the correct proportions, etc. For this exercise, we were supposed to mix our own colors (rather like traditional painting), rather than use the eyedropper tool, to avoid making the colors look flat. In general, I think being able to "spot" colors and have an intuitive understanding of how to mix is q...

EARLY ACCESS/STUDIES: More Faces!

Do you guys have a favorite Marvel character? Here are some more head studies I've been working on--my favorites from the many I did for a class! Honestly these studies are pretty relaxing to do. The color ones are from MCU screenshots--I realize it's been a while since I've done stuff in a painterly style and I do kind of miss it! The black and white/lineart ones are from a mix of photo refs and tv stills (guess who they are!).

I recently saw Black Widow, and while it wasn't my favorit...

BEHIND-THE-SCENES: Face muscles

Happy Halloween! Having some skulls and muscles on my mind! These are from some head/facial anatomy studies I did this month--can you tell who they are?

I'm excited to be sharing more of the stuff I've been working on soon, but in the meantime, have a spooky night!

EARLY ACCESS: Autumn Pinup

Eyyy fall is here and I'm starting to get back into the creative stuff! It's still a slow process of returning right now--perhaps more on that later--so I will be pausing October's payment as well while continuing to post things here at my leisure.

Here's a little autumn pinup because apparently that's what I like to do for fun on my personal time :P 

Ok, so real talk: I hadn't really drawn in about 5 weeks and it was definitely intimidating to pick up my tablet again after t...

EARLY ACCESS: MHW Celebration

I finally got a chance to finish this piece from my digital illustrations class at Brainstorm! I know the premise is silly but I had fun and I would say I learned a bit about composition and perspective along the way. The first version with the blue is what I was encouraged to experiment with in class (so more outside of my comfort zone), and second is more of my usual muted color preferences. I'm not entirely satisfied with either, but that's okay! This was more about learning rather than ma...

Update!

Hi wonderful patrons! Just another quick update to remind everyone that billing should still be paused for September. Still in the thick of things, but hopefully going to get back to creating soon--fingers crossed! In the meantime, hope everyone is doing well :]]

Quick update!

Hey everyone!

Just letting you know that I'm going to be pausing your billing for August and September. If you have been charged, let me know and I will send you a refund!

Basically, I've been super tied up with some things on my end--more so than I expected--so sadly that means less energy to spend on personal art and growth :[  And with that, there's some uncertainty on my end if I can create enough content in the upcoming weeks. However, I'll still be around as I do have s...

WIP: MHW Celebration

Hello, how’s everything going? Here’s a work in progress for an illustration I’m doing, practicing perspective and composition. I’d like to try some different color variations and maybe get at least a cell shade and add in some more shadows/lighting. 

A month ago or so, I got to the credits of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. It took me a really long time to complete because, while I am pretty busy and don’t have the energy to even play video games sometimes, another part ...

PROCESS: Chibi Tanya

So June has flown by in a whirl! As always, thanks so much everyone for being a part of my patreon! I wanted to start July with some process images of my little chibi. Side note--let me know if any of you have a preference for video step-by-steps or images!

The first image is actually an update from the one I previously posted. Changes are based on our instructor’s feedback--I altered some things like increasing the size of the scarf to make the figure look more proportional, adding m...

BEHIND-THE-SCENES: Gestures

If you’ve been looking into how to get better at drawing, you've probably come across the advice, “Do your gestures and studies!” Admittedly, that’s something that’s fallen by the wayside for me in the last couple of months *cough* since maybe last October. And I’ve probably paid for that--in terms of how much I've struggled more than I should when it came to drawing!

Regardless of style or approach, I think these sorts of exercises can definitely (1) increase drawing speed ...

EARLY ACCESS: Chibi Tanya

Heyo! Here's a little chibi Delta Force Sniper Tanya I made for my Digital Illustrations class. The assignment had us design a chibi character (so I reused one of my sketch design) and render. I think my latest questions are (1) how to make things really pop, while staying within the bounds of earth tones that I like to use and (2) how to render stylized characters without going into uncanny valley, and (3) how to incorporate line art into a render. Some people's art look super rendered (ther...

Q&A: June roundup + update

Hey lovely supporters! Hope you’re somewhere enjoying the nice summer weather! Again, here’s an opportunity to post any questions you may have, so leave your notes below (or feel free to give an update about yourself if you like)!

On my end, things have been super busy in the art world! I got my first concept art gig, where I’m designing a game character, plus, I’m learning ZBrush and taking a digital illustrations class (basically to try to get better at rendering). Along with ...

EARLY ACCESS: Tanya x Halden

Never enough time…

A continuation of drawing some of my otps before things get super hectic and back to skills/portfolio building! Playing around with values and brightness/darkness to try out various moods. I like them for different reasons, but in this case, I do think the light one reads the best.

Q&A: May roundup + learning digital art

Hi wonderful peeps! It’s the middle of the month again, so time for a check-in with Q&A. Post any questions you may have for me below! In response to last month’s questions about getting into and learning digital art:

1. How'd you get into Digital art?

I’ve always loved drawing, especially characters! My favorite thing to do was to write stories and draw those characters, and in middle school, I started getting involved in online forums for writing stories--so...

PROCESS: Eagle Huntress

Hi there! Here's a little experimental process video I created to show how I typically arrive at a sketch--finished or rough.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES: Color and detail designs

In addition, I thought it would be interesting to show how I go about determining the color/designs for a concept.

Color tests: I had a basic idea of what color pallet I wanted--the character is a hunter, someone in touch with nature, and so I wanted to keep the colors rugge...

EARLY ACCESS: Evi x Irina

With you, I'm home.

Here’s the finished piece for Evi x Irina! I’ve polished the painting (smoothing out some of the rougher linework) and adjusted the colors. I’m actually having a hard time deciding which one I prefer--with a sky background or just something super simple with no background! I admit I’m guilty of just drawing my characters against white backgrounds a lot, but I really like the presentation!! Over the years, I’ve noticed that I’ve been really drawn ...

WIP: Evi x Irina

Hey guys! Hope you’re all doing well! Here’s a piece I’ve been working on this week--a little Evi x Irina drawing. Evi is the blond character, and Irina is Tanya’s wayward sister... what can I say? :))))

I wanted to do something uplifting. For purely personal reasons, It’s been an emotionally challenging few months and so I wanted to capture the mood of two people who have also struggled, but despite that, are finding happiness and feeling loved. I also wanted to draw more cha...

Q&A: April roundup

Hello everybody!

I’m so honored that you’ve joined my Patreon--your support really means the world to me! Thank you very much! Since this is my first time using the platform, please bear with me as I figure out how all of this works (and happy to receive your feedback too). At the end of the day, I sincerely hope you will find the stuff I provide here interesting and valuable :)

With that said, I’d like to leave a Q&A post each month, where you can comment with any quest...