Lara Croft

Well, its Christmas break and I'm NOT working on anything work related. So its been a really good time for me to work on me and practice my craft and process on personal projects just for me. So this would be my first Illustration just for me for the break. :)

Lara Croft
I also have process work for this to help me remember what I do basically. Especially with this one, it was alot of trial and error, and just responding to what I see and the things I do while I'm working.

Photo Reference

So yes. This is me. I use myself for my photo references mostly. Pretty much because I know exactly what I want, I'm very responsive, open to ideas and follow instructions to a tee. Very goofy, and no I do not feel weird doing a pose that will be making a female character do in my artwork.

Initial sketch

This is very rough and sketchy, I do this on a separate layer, following my reference. This is done very scratchy and quick to just get the figure down, the pose, the attitude etc.

Tighter Lines

This is just me refining the sketchy lines that I laid down on the first layer. I lower the opacity on the scratchy lines so they are verrry faint, then I do these on top of them in a fresh layer.

Tighter Lines 2

Same process as before, on a separate layer I just focus more on details, so in this case clothes

Base Tones in Grayscale

I fill my background with Gray. Then I Tone the environment with a textured brush very loosely. In this case its a cave, so its going to be very dark. Then I just color my entire figure in a middle gray in a separate layer. I always do a middle gray because its much easier to add in darks and lights than if you were starting off with white or black.

Value Render

This is the part of the painting that most people will argue is the most important part of the process. You just basically lay down the values in terms of light and dark in a grayscale. Helps organize the painting in terms of composition

Overlay Layer

Flat red overlay layer. (I chose red because of the flare) Then I add in whites using the flare as the main light source.

Color Burn

Using another layer set to Color Burn, I wash in natural colors (Skin tone for skin, brown for shirt) This gives richness to the piece by keeping the effect of the red overlay layer.

Smoothing out

This is where the piece really starts to look finished. I do this on a separate layer in case I screw up. Basically, after the color burn stage, I have all the colors I want to use in the piece, down. So its just a matter of using the eye dropper tool, selecting and painting over and over till all the colors blend nicely.

Special Effects

This is just really focusing on the smoke. Using a custom texture brush I just brush that stuff in, pretty much unplanned honestly, just kinda went with it see what looks good. I did take a quick glance at a reference to see how much smoke and stuff is generated by a hand flare, but thats about it honestly.

Touch Ups

These are just little tweeks to the piece. I adjust the color balance on an adjustments layer, made the highlights redder and added a slight green atmospheric tone in the shadows.