Last week I came up with the crazy idea to do a digital painting: not a simple practice painting (although it certainly taught me many things), but one that would challenge me a bit more. I wanted to paint something that I would enjoy working on. I'm happy to say that it most certainly fit that criteria:
So this is what has kept me busy during the last week-and-a-half or so. As the painting came closer to completion, I became more and more eager to work on it. I used an image from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as a reference for the painting. The biggest problem I had was that I was painting this on my laptop monitor. Everything looked great, but not on different monitors. I compared the image on a bunch of different computers. I found out that I didn't like the colours on the majority of them, hence the colour-correction of the final image. It now looks more like the painting I initially painted on my laptop.
I figured it would be nice to post my steps through the painting process, so here goes:
A simple sketch: the origin of the whole thing.
I added the basic islands of colour and experimented with the background colour I liked the most.
I moved the head up slightly, just to give the roar that extra bit of power ;)
The rendering begins!
I did some other minor corrections; mainly the tail.
This is where I had saved the best (worst!) for last. The mane...
They proved to be an interesting challenge, but I'm happy with how they turned out.
A few corrections in colour, contrast and detail.
Here I started working on the rocks. This provided me with some challenges.
Some final changes before starting to work on the sky.
And that's it! I really liked painting this, and I might actually do another one in the near-future.
