Drawing a D&D character commission

I was hired to created a D&D character commission for a couple of their PC’s – Arettimae “Artie” Talwin, goliath barbarian, and Merias Foxtale, reformed warlock turned paladin, plus Artie’s baby bullette companion, Crem. Here’s a walkthrough of how I made this image!

Thumbnail

The first step in almost every drawing I do is the thumbnail. This is a super scribbly mess where I figure out the general idea behind the proportions and pose. It’s mostly just gobbledygook at this point, but it lays an important foundation for the next steps.

Thumbnail

Sketch

From there, still working in Photoshop, I sketch out the characters. I like starting with the general body shapes first and then work the clothing on top in layers, because the body underneath will affect how the clothes lay on the figure.

For outfit designs especially, I like to browse Pinterest to gather inspiration. For example, for Artie, I knew I wanted to incorporate some punk-like aspects, so I looked at images along those lines. For Merias, he’s a suave businessman sort of character, so I tried to figure out how to incorporate armor into a neatly pressed suit design.

At this point, I send the image to the client for review to make sure it fits their vision for their character.

Sketch

Drawing

I like to work in a hybrid digital-traditional process. I love digital color, but there is still something very special about pencil on paper.

So, once the sketch is approved, I print it out and attach it to a lightbox with a piece of smooth bristol paper on top and begin to do a clean finished drawing on top. I really focus on getting rich textures with the pencil, because they’ll show up marvelously once it’s colored.

After the drawing is completed, I scan it back into Photoshop and do some clean-up work, which includes cleaning up the white of the paper and increasing the contrast of the lines. The end result looks like this:

Pencil drawing

Flat colors

And now onto coloring! I start with a base layer of flat colors. The layer is placed underneath the drawing, which is set to Multiply mode, so that it darkens anything underneath it. I also color the drawing to match, so that it blends seamlessly. You can see a good example of that in Artie’s hair. The lineart is set to pink, so it maintains vibrancy in such a bright color.

Flat colors

Shadows

I noodle around with the flat colors until I’m satisfied with the color scheme. But at this point, the image is still looking, well, flat. That’s when you start adding more dimension to the image with shadows!

The shadows are applied on top of the flat colors using another multiply layer. I usually use some variation on purple for my shadows because it provides an excellent balance of cool enough for the shadows, but warm enough to keep the character looking bright and energetic.

I start with very dark shadows in the spots where light is least likely to reach – these are called occlusions. This is mostly where one surface meets another, like in the armpits, between the clothes and skin, and under their feet.

From there, I transition into softer shadows that curved around forms to give dimension.

Shadows

Light

It’s starting to look close to finished now! The next step, to balance out the previous shadows, is to introduce light. I mostly use Overlay layers for this stage, although harsher lights (like that coming from the fire in Merias’s hand) will sometimes benefit from Hard Light layers or Screen layers.

If you’re interested in learning more about layer modes, I recommend this article by Justin Gerard on Muddy Colors.

For light, I usually use colors in the range of yellows and oranges, which contrast against the purple shadows! (This, of course, varies from image to image. There are always exceptions!)

Light

Final details

And lastly, there are a few details to wrap up before this piece is finished. These mostly include last minutes adjustments to little things like jewelry or tattoos. Little highlights. Small color adjustments.

I include textures into my work to give it more of a tactile feel. I really love watercolor textures because they introduce some randomness in color and texture that is tricky to simulate in a digital setting.

Final image

And that’s the final image! Thank you for joining me in walking through the process for creating this illustration.

If you’d like to get started on your own character artwork, you can click the button below to get started!

Bailey Morgan

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