Hi guys,
I´m going to explain how I did my last work step by step, I´ve post the main references that I used, some interesting links that may help you and a custom brush by myself. My apologies for my poor english, I´m still studying to improve it :)
Well, at first at all I had the idea of a soul-liberating character and I was thinking about this concept until the image is formed in my head, then I made a little and fast rough sketch, I looked for documentation in Internet and I saw a lot of images of Venetian Carnival masks, birds (live and dead), skull´s birds, North American Indians and some Inuit women, after that, my imagination started work at full speed. I took a photo of myself to reference of the pose, especially of the hands. When I had all things that I needed, I started working in photoshop.
Here are the main references that I used:
In my two last works I did a brushstrokes background and I added a texture before start to work on the character. I used a custom brush by myself that looks like an acrylic brushstroke and a texture of a special paper, I put two layers of texture in "linear burn" mode with diferent opacity and erased some parts to achive a good effect. You can download my brush here
Here is the texture that I used in my two last works:
I usually don´t used the pencil sketch in my digital work, only use it as a fast way to put my ideas on paper and then I sketching again digitaly but at this time I scaned it and used it as reference because I liked the proportions and some shapes on it, anyway, I did a lot of changes in the process of color sketching and painting.
After doing a basic background I started to paint the character, I did a basic color scheme at first, then I started to working in the volume. I used the same brush to paint the feathers and others details but the skin and the bird skull was done with a custom brush by Charlie Bowater, you can find this brush in her deviant journal clicking here.
To design the little bird souls I used as reference a sketch that I did some years ago in which some birds flying away from a head, I like those birds very much. I used some layer effects to create the sense of moving and added some splash with a custom brush by Yang Xueguo called "snow", you can download his "good brush set" here.
Here is my old sketch that I used as reference to design the birds:
When I finished the birds I worked on the final details on the background, dress and hair, again I used a custom brush by Yang Xueguo to make the dark leaves on the background.
To finish the illustration definitely I did some color settings and made a frame with rounded edges.
I hope you´ve enjoyed the tutorial and it helps you, if you have any questions don´t hesitate to ask me.
Thanks for visiting :)
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