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I managed to get a series of pretty good wip shots of this particular project, from the first thumbnail I drew onwards. This is a good example of the process I go through in terms of composition and rendering. In all honesty, I have to admit that rendering is the bit I love the most. Composition, while necessary and interesting, is part of the “homework” for me. When I’m done with the homework, I get to play at rendering!
[Edit: I feel I should mention that this is meant as a bit of a birthday present for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrs_leary as she had expressed an appreciation for this piece as well as the idea of learning more about how it was made. I hope you enjoy it, my dear!]
Here’s the thumbnail, a very quick sketch to get my idea down on paper. It’s also helpful for visualizing placement in the frame; much like photography you want to try to place things in ⅓ or ⅔ of the picture, rather than dividing it down the center. You can see where I drew the frame around the figures after I sketched them.
Really this is almost just a gesture drawing, to help me clarify the pose of the subjects and the way they relate to each other. And it immediately makes a flaw in this composition obvious; Bradley’s foot would be in Colin’s stomach.
So, despite my wanting to be able to focus more on their faces (I’m a portrait artist at heart, methinks), I have to place them farther apart and in landscape view rather than portrait. The line I’ve drawn between their faces is the eyeline, and it’s to help me determine the angle at which they’ll be holding their heads.
I feel I should mention that even at this early stage I had spent hours scouring the web for images of these two, trying to find a characteristic pose for each of them as themselves that fit in with the scene in the story. The larger body positions are fairly universal, but the tilt of Colin’s head and arms, and the twist of Bradley’s ankle, are things that are characteristic of the guys being themselves. Not to mention their expressions, especially when they together and are both amused.
Here’s where I started putting in the world around them, and fixing various and sundry errors I found in their figures. Colin’s folded leg is now a reasonable length (his thigh was much too long before). I switched which of Bradley’s legs is folded close to him, as having it the other way still had Bradley’s foot on Colin, even with them further apart.
And now we have drapery! Yes, I put them in clothes. And then the clothes have to hang off of them, which means I got to draw folds. Lots of folds!
Here I begin to shade Bradley in. I found his face incredibly difficult to render accurately. I ended up re-doing it literally more times than I can count. I lost track. Weirdly, I held off filling in the face until I had done most of the clothing, which is totally backwards for me. I have no idea why, though.
The beginnings of shading in Colin. At this point I hadn't settled on which DCfC shirt to have him wearing. And again, oddly for me, I did the face last.
Every picture has to have an awkward phase, right? Well, here’s one of this picture’s teen phases. I find smiling faces with teeth showing really hard to do. Moving on...
Whew! Amazing what shading can do for a clown face! Here’s Colin all shaded in, complete with DCfC shirt (the one he wore to SDCC, if you’re curious). And I’ve done the shoes! The internet and other fans and twitter pics from the crew are wonderful things. As near as I can figure, those are really shoes the guys own. Colin is in DC shoes (white Ken Blocks, if you must know), and Bradley is wearing the natural color high top Converse.
You can see me playing around with what I want to do with the background. Oh, and that shadow you see around Bradley’s head? It’s from me having to smallify his head repeatedly. I kept making it too big. In fact it’s still to big in this shot. But dang it, I liked the expression I’d gotten in that version. *sigh*
OK! So, Bradley’s head is finally the right size, stairs are shaded in, light/shadows from streetlamp are established, rain is added, puddles are on ground, door is hinted at in the background. But hang on a minute. The door ends right at the halfway mark across the page, taking away from the depth of the picture. *sigh* More composition.
Aaaaand, we’re done! The door is moved, so that your eye goes from high left to lower right without getting caught in the middle.
![]()
So now all that was left was to get a good photo of it (difficult, as the graphite delineating Bradley’s eyes kept reflecting the ambient light back at the camera lens, thus making it not dark like it should be), and to adjust the contrast in gimp. I ended up using the auto equalize function as it brought out an ambiance I loved.
That was it for creating the physical drawing. But I didn’t stop there. Then I made scraps out of this to use as chapter breaks. And then I piled them up "randomly" to make the title page, which is much harder than you’d think! But that’s a whole separate post, all on it’s own, lol. You’ll have to let me know if you feel like seeing how I did that part. :D
To those of you brave enough to make it this far, thanks for tagging along. I really hope you liked seeing some of the process I went through in making this!
[Edit: I feel I should mention that this is meant as a bit of a birthday present for
mrs_leary as she had expressed an appreciation for this piece as well as the idea of learning more about how it was made. I hope you enjoy it, my dear!]Here’s the thumbnail, a very quick sketch to get my idea down on paper. It’s also helpful for visualizing placement in the frame; much like photography you want to try to place things in ⅓ or ⅔ of the picture, rather than dividing it down the center. You can see where I drew the frame around the figures after I sketched them.
Really this is almost just a gesture drawing, to help me clarify the pose of the subjects and the way they relate to each other. And it immediately makes a flaw in this composition obvious; Bradley’s foot would be in Colin’s stomach.
So, despite my wanting to be able to focus more on their faces (I’m a portrait artist at heart, methinks), I have to place them farther apart and in landscape view rather than portrait. The line I’ve drawn between their faces is the eyeline, and it’s to help me determine the angle at which they’ll be holding their heads.
I feel I should mention that even at this early stage I had spent hours scouring the web for images of these two, trying to find a characteristic pose for each of them as themselves that fit in with the scene in the story. The larger body positions are fairly universal, but the tilt of Colin’s head and arms, and the twist of Bradley’s ankle, are things that are characteristic of the guys being themselves. Not to mention their expressions, especially when they together and are both amused.
Here’s where I started putting in the world around them, and fixing various and sundry errors I found in their figures. Colin’s folded leg is now a reasonable length (his thigh was much too long before). I switched which of Bradley’s legs is folded close to him, as having it the other way still had Bradley’s foot on Colin, even with them further apart.
And now we have drapery! Yes, I put them in clothes. And then the clothes have to hang off of them, which means I got to draw folds. Lots of folds!
Here I begin to shade Bradley in. I found his face incredibly difficult to render accurately. I ended up re-doing it literally more times than I can count. I lost track. Weirdly, I held off filling in the face until I had done most of the clothing, which is totally backwards for me. I have no idea why, though.
The beginnings of shading in Colin. At this point I hadn't settled on which DCfC shirt to have him wearing. And again, oddly for me, I did the face last.
Every picture has to have an awkward phase, right? Well, here’s one of this picture’s teen phases. I find smiling faces with teeth showing really hard to do. Moving on...
Whew! Amazing what shading can do for a clown face! Here’s Colin all shaded in, complete with DCfC shirt (the one he wore to SDCC, if you’re curious). And I’ve done the shoes! The internet and other fans and twitter pics from the crew are wonderful things. As near as I can figure, those are really shoes the guys own. Colin is in DC shoes (white Ken Blocks, if you must know), and Bradley is wearing the natural color high top Converse.
You can see me playing around with what I want to do with the background. Oh, and that shadow you see around Bradley’s head? It’s from me having to smallify his head repeatedly. I kept making it too big. In fact it’s still to big in this shot. But dang it, I liked the expression I’d gotten in that version. *sigh*
OK! So, Bradley’s head is finally the right size, stairs are shaded in, light/shadows from streetlamp are established, rain is added, puddles are on ground, door is hinted at in the background. But hang on a minute. The door ends right at the halfway mark across the page, taking away from the depth of the picture. *sigh* More composition.
Aaaaand, we’re done! The door is moved, so that your eye goes from high left to lower right without getting caught in the middle.
So now all that was left was to get a good photo of it (difficult, as the graphite delineating Bradley’s eyes kept reflecting the ambient light back at the camera lens, thus making it not dark like it should be), and to adjust the contrast in gimp. I ended up using the auto equalize function as it brought out an ambiance I loved.
That was it for creating the physical drawing. But I didn’t stop there. Then I made scraps out of this to use as chapter breaks. And then I piled them up "randomly" to make the title page, which is much harder than you’d think! But that’s a whole separate post, all on it’s own, lol. You’ll have to let me know if you feel like seeing how I did that part. :D
To those of you brave enough to make it this far, thanks for tagging along. I really hope you liked seeing some of the process I went through in making this!
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 08:45 pm (UTC)From:Nice job, Cello!
As always it's amazing to see the process. :D
no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 08:50 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 11:05 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-10-19 04:56 am (UTC)From:You're efforts as a beta contributed to my having enough WIP photos to do this, lol. Without that I probably wouldn't have taken this many photos! :D
no subject
Date: 2011-10-20 05:41 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-10-21 03:37 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-11-12 10:32 am (UTC)From:LOL (with fellow feeling) re the initial composition - which works beautifully except for that one fatal flaw... Many of my initial fic ideas are like that, too. :-D I kind of like that part of the creative process: having a bit of a wrestle or tug-o-war to keep the essentials, and make the rest more canonical or workable. It can often lead, I find - as I hope it does with you - to further good ideas, and they gather force, and before you know it you're typing (or sketching).
I love the second image you show here. Even though it's 'only' a few very simple lines - and you say at this point it's universal - I feel you've already captured the essentials of their head shapes, and their body shapes, too.
I love the notion of you looking for examples of their actual body language, and their expressions when together and amused. And you even got very specific about the shoes they're wearing! I appreciate all the homework, and it certainly pays off in the results!
I love seeing the shading bringing this all to wonderful life. A fascinating process! The composition is also really interesting, including things like the rule of thirds, and not letting the viewer's gaze snag on anything as it follows Bradley's gaze at Colin, and back again.
And as I've said elsewhere, I thought it was brilliantly apt for the fic, you presenting the image in torn pieces, and then (at last!) whole. Beautiful in conception and execution - and intriguing, too.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us - both the image and the creative process! It's greatly appreciated. ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 07:47 am (UTC)From:Oh, composition! LOL, yes, the fatal flaw... it forces the growth of an idea in new directions, indeed. I just keep bashing on the ideas by drawing and drawing and drawing until something finally works. Much like writing, I suppose! Funny thing about this one was that I really wanted Colin's hand in frame, and it just wouldn't, wouldn't do that for me.
I love that you find them, in their most basic shapes, to still be them. It pleases me to no end that, at least for someone other than myself, I managed to crack that mysterious code of personality; that weird blend of build, posture, and movement that makes us individual.
I went through so, so many pictures! It's all a bit blurry now, but I probably spent a week just looking at photos before I even put pencil to paper. It was both fun and frustrating, knowing what I was after, and just HOPING someone had caught it on camera and was willing to share it with the world. Fortunately these two are adorable together, extremely photogenic, and our fandom is both very engaged with the process of filming and exceedingly generous in sharing the results.
As for moving the door, I was very lucky the paper was forgiving and didn't leave any evidence of its being in that silly place I first put it. Good composition can make such a big difference in how you see a drawing. I can make no claim to have mastered it, though I try to adhere to it's basic principles; mostly I just end up with something that feels "right" and run with it. In this case, something felt wrong and that's when I checked against the rules. Ooops!
The idea for the scraps really was the story reaching out, tapping me on the shoulder, and quietly saying, "Do this."
I'm so very glad I listened!
You're very welcome! I'm so very pleased that you are pleased with my humble gift to you. How's that for circular happiness? :D