Here, I want to present you an illustration of a character. Now, I'll explain why it is in my portfolio.
Final sketch
Well, I didn't have a genius idea about this project. I wanted to draw a character design of a killer. Something between ninja, mafia (the hat) and a bandit. One feature of this artwork is clear, straight, sharp shapes with visible corners. Sharp shapes in character design mean something evil, danger. With cloak and hat covering the eyes I wanted to show some mystery.
Lineart
In the lineart, I added strong shadows around the eyes and under the cloak to make contrast effect. Lineart came out amazing (my personal opinion) and defined shapes and corners. Black strong shadows became suitable for this style.
I wanted the character to be dark an in dark tones (because of ninja features) and actually, before current colour palette, I coloured him in purple and green. For me it was boring, like something special was missing. After further several experiments with the colouring, I finally decided to choose this one (second image). Even though, character partially lost his mystery, he got more stylish and interesting. I used analogous scheme, which means using adjacent colours (here, it's a yellow, orange and red). This colour scheme, in my opinion, makes him more iconic.
Shadows and blicks
Shadows were drawn by adding darker, colder tones of the colours. Blicks are brighter and warmer colours. White colour-blick was added to show and define edges. Shadows and blicks highlighted the shapes even more. I used more cartoony-comic style for shadows and blicks.
Final
Finally, background. I made it simple because the main focus of this artwork is the character himself. In background, I used green-blue colours, which suits the tetradic colour scheme and looked great. It was an interesting experience for me to work on this illustration. I gained some knowledge and learnt about my mistakes. That's why, due to the extraordinary features, this work is in my portfolio.
Thank you very much for looking at my art, reading and going through my experience with me. Hope you enjoyed!
The End
