Hello everybody this is Yasmeen from YarkspiriFantasyArt.com.
Today I'm working on a request that was made by one of you guys, my subscribers.
This drawing is an apocalyptic, laser wielding, mutated limb / robotic character.
This drawing has quite a few elements to it, so I had to figure out a pose that would show the most amount of detail.
The pose did still need to show the characters character.
I went through a couple different renditions of the pose until I finally settled on this one.
This pose really allowed me to flesh out some of the details that I wanted to concentrate on.
I did want to show the mutated limbs, the laser weapon and the cybernetics.
For this illustration, I did look at some mutated limbs but the search results weren't that good.
The moment I searched for deformities, I began getting some really good reference material.
I discovered a birth defect that does occur in humans even if it's exceedingly rare.
In this birth defect, the two eyes become merged into one single eye in the middle of the head.
I decided to include this birth defect into this character design along with more deformities in the other arm.
This characters proportions are more skewed to emphasize that he wasn't your average person.
I exaggerated a lot of the upper torso but I still had to make a lot of tweaks to insure that the character still fit together.
I've just started working on the giant eye in the center of the characters head.
If you were to look up the word "deformities", you'll actually notice that the two eyes join but dip inwards where the nose is located.
I personally found this to be very interesting.
I'm not sure if this remains there for a number of years since I was mainly looking at baby deformities.
When I did the search, the baby deformities was some of the first results I got in my Google search.
Once I figured out what type of deformaties in this character I began working out some the mechanical portions of the design.
For the mechanics of the leg, I figured out how I was going to draw some the robotics.
I was referencing robotics, I was looking at a lot of steam-punk reference.
For the steam-punk portion I'm actually subscribed to the "league of Steam" channel on YouTube.
They have really entertaining videos and they are great for referencing apocalyptic or steam-punk type settings.
Given the criteria for this image, this character would fit loosely within this category.
I was looking at a lot of reference and that really helped me on this drawing.
In my previous video, I used a flat grey color but in this piece I decided to change it up with a textured grey-scale background.
There's pros and cons to both techniques.
Since I'm not using a flat color I have to take more time to do my shading because there's more that has to be painted over.
Because I have uneven layers of shading behind my character
This makes the image more time consuming to work on.
In last weeks video, I didn't have to do as much shading to get the same amount of detail.
This was because I already had my mid-tone as the background color and I was just adding some minor shadows and highlights.
The textured background does give me a very nice gritty effect that I normally like to include in my pieces.
This is one of major pros to using this type of technique.
There's also a second functionality to having a textured background.
It gives me also a randomized texture which causes your eye to automatically start picking up shapes and detail.
From a conceptual point of view, it really helps in figuring out what your going to do with the image.
This is especially prevalent in the preliminary sketching stages.
I personally do this with a flat white background because I'm more concerned with the silhouette.
If I don't have any plans and I need to draw something extremely quickly, this technique would be faster.
It does depend on the type of workflow that your looking for.
In this case I really wanted that gritty feel to the drawing so I started with a textured background.
If I did want to do a piece very quickly and I didn't have that much time, it already gives me something to work with.
I already have some general shapes so my eyes going to start assembling new shapes and images from these textures.
Right now I'm working on the eye and face of this character.
I spent quite a bit of time on the chest area of the character because of all of the muscle anatomy I have to keep in mind.
This is mainly due to the fact that this characters body is twisting significantly in the illustration.
I have to take some extra time on places like the neck muscle because it so overly developed
All of those areas have to be worked out before I can begin working on the armor.
As in my previous drawings, I added some very basic shading so that I'm aware of where my light source in coming from.
In this case the light source is coming from the top left hand corner of the image.
I figured this out by adding some really light shadows and elaborating on these shadows and details afterwards.
I did the shading by changing the opacity of my brush.
I just started working on the claw as you can see.
Since the claw is supposed to be extremely deformed and is part of him I looked at my own hand as reference.
Obviously my hand isn't deformed, but I modified the general bone structure to get this shape.
I've shortened to forearm of this character significantly to the point where it's none existent.
I've lengthened to the extreme, bones and anatomy related to the hand.
That claw like portion is essentially his hand.
It's not longer his forearm but his hand that's been extended.
That was some of the modifications that I did to the anatomy when I was figuring out how to draw this character.
There's quite a bit of details in the machinery that take a lot of time to do.
The best way that I've found to plot out this information is to paint with the black and white colors set at 30% opacity.
I'm working out how to show as much information as possible with as little detail as possible.
Since most of those areas will be in the shadows so I don't want to over elaborate the information.
I want to hint enough details that the eye will automatically fill in the rest.
I'm normally adding a slight amount of shading and then add just enough information to show that extra amount of detail.
I just plotted out very quickly the shadows of the leg to ensure I had the information I needed to start working on this.
I'm just working on the contrast of the different elements of that leg to make sure the information shows correctly.
Generally if you have a mechanical limb that need to rotate you'll have a ball joint.
It was for this reason that I made sure to include a ball joint in the hip area at least.
For the knee area, is very similar to what you would see in a toy or figurine.
You'll normally have a narrow cylinder that is attached to one limb and two cylinders on the side which connect to the other limb.
Those three cylinders will pivot on a rod to allow for the bending of the knee.
Since this is the most efficient structure, it is what I aimed to have on this character.
Since this is supposed to be more post apocalyptic, this would be the most likely type of machinery that would be found.
If the character had been salvaging part in an old wreckage, it is most likely what he would have found.
Now for the arm, I tried a couple of different modifications
I thought about turning the arm in a couple different direction.
The only problem was that it didn't look appealing, so I brought it a little further away from the body.
This did help the drawing significantly.
For the rocks, I simply plotted out some of the highlights and shadows.
From those shadows, I extrapolated additional detailed areas of the rock formation.
When drawing rocks it is very important to show broken surfaces and cracks.
I do go in after I've figured out my basic shading and highlight certain details by changing the opacity of my brush.
For rocks you don't normally have to fully plot out all of the surfaces.
You do want to hint at the different surfaces.
It will normally be enough to suggest that it's an inorganic material or man made like structure.
Now for the background, it further away so it doesn't require as much detail as the mid-ground and foreground elements.
It is important for that the foreground look like it's overlapping the other elements within this drawing.
I will be enlarging this foreground element to the size that I need it to be.
I've just added a basic green color layer to my canvas.
This allows me to get my general colors that I'm going to work with for this piece.
It's normally better to have cooler colors in the shadows, with warmer color in the lit areas.
It is for this reason that I chose to use both green and purple as my main colors.
When I was figuring out the colors that I was going to use, I was using my color wheel.
I was simply choosing the appropriate color on the chart in order to make sure that I was choosing complementary colors.
Even though I wanted my main color pallet to be green and purple and still wanted to show that the character had a skin tone.
This made sure that he did look human like to a certain degree.
I did have to make sure that the shading was adequate while not taking away from his human like coloring.
I'm just adding some additional shadows, to strengthen some of the shadow areas.
I did add two layers for this.
I used a color burn layer and then I went in and sampled my shadow area so I would be able to paint directly ontop.
This allowed me to paint the cast shadow.
It gave me a solid color to work with because the color burn tool only darkens areas that have color or shading already applied.
The more shading you have the darker those areas become.
It can be problematic if your trying to extend some of the shadow areas.
It doesn't work as well for that which is why I have to paint directly on top to achieve the desired result.
This character is almost completed now. I'm just adding some fog effects behind the character to simulate a smoggy atmosphere.
I've just added some of the laser weaponry highlights.
This is the finalized image. It was a very fun piece to work on.
Mechanical objects tend to be my fortes when it comes to drawing.
I hope to see you guys soon. Thank you and take care.