Transcripts
1. Introduction : The fantasy genre
allows us to create amazing characters who go on incredible adventures
and does an artist. You can use your skills to
bring those characters to life with fun and colorful
character portraits. Hi, my name is Andy Parsons. I'm an illustrator
and an art teacher, and I love playing fantasy
games with my friends, like the really famous
one that you can play by rolling the dice. Today, I'm going to
take you through my full process for creating
fantasy character portraits. From start to finish. We'll find some reference
images that can inspire us and that we can use and
responsible and ethical ways. Then we'll create a
sketch that will be the roadmap for
our illustration. We'll add some
color, some shading, and finish off with some
great detail, some line work. If you haven't seen
my previous classes, learn to draw faces with
four simple shapes, expressions, sketching
characters with emotion or fearless
figure drawing. I really recommend
you check those out first because we're
gonna be taking all of the principles from those and putting them together
in this process. Now, my art style has changed a lot in the years since
I made those classes. But the principles
and ideas that I talk about are still the same. If you're ready, grab
your character sheet and your favorite drawing
medium, and let's get started.
2. References: Before we start drawing, we're going to be gathering some inspiration in the
form of reference images. We're going to be looking up reference images in a few
different categories, like pose, different articles of clothing and hair and facial
features for your character. The really fun thing
about drawing in the fantasy genre
is that we can pull references from a wide variety
of sources like history, the modern day, different trends and styles and fashions and mash them all together
in a way that reflects the personality
of your character. Now one thing we
want to be really careful of is we don't want to be copying another
artist's work. And the best way to prevent this is to diversify your references, to get references from a
lot of different places and combine the
different elements that speak to you the most. It's that act of pulling
different bits and pieces from different places and choosing to combine those. That is your original
choice as an artist. And that's where
your originality and creativity are
going to shine through. So for my class project, I'm going to be drawing
my character Rosalind. She is a wizard. She is a high elf, and she's a detective. I love old-fashioned
detective stories like Sherlock Holmes and
the Christy's books. And so I wanted to
reflect that in a magical way in the game that I'm
playing with my friends. So for Rosalind, I have found a few really
fun reference images. This first one is a picture of the actress
Marlene Dietrich. She was an old Hollywood
actress in the 1940s and '50s. Very famous for that film
moire kind of genre. And I love the confident, relaxed pose that she has here, the way she's kinda
just leaning against the wall and looking very confident with
the head tilt there. I think that's gonna be a
really great pose for Rosalind. And this is the really
iconic Sherlock Holmes look. I think I'm going to
take the little necktie and Cape from this outfit and ditch the pipe and the hat so
that it says Detective, but it's not exactly a
copy of Sherlock Holmes. I love this hat from the 130s. It very much speaks of that
Golden Age detective era. But I think one
change I'm going to make is I'm going to
make the center of it tall and pointy like a
traditional wizards hat. So we get that blend of
like wizard detective. Then for hair and
facial features, I was really inspired by another Golden Age Hollywood
actress, Veronica Lake. She was also very active in
the film noir mystery genre. She was very famous for this peekaboo
hairstyle that kind of covers one of her eyes, which I think is a really
great look for Rosalind, give that air of
like coy mystery. I especially love
this illustration of her for
Cosmopolitan magazine. This is gonna be a huge
inspiration for Rosalind. I've got all my reference
images collected together and it's time to
start my character portrait. We're going to begin
with the base sketch
3. Sketch: Alright, it's time to begin my character sketch of Rosalind. For the sketch, I'm going to be moving through this
process pretty quickly because my
other Skillshare class, fearless figure drawing, is
completely about this process of creating the base sketch
for character illustrations. So if you want more detail, definitely check that class out, but I'll be narrating
what I do as I go along. Again. I am in Procreate on my iPad, but this process works for whatever technology or
medium you want to use. I'm just going to
start by sketching out the stick figure that will be the base for my
character sketch. So we've got the little oval, maybe that's a little bit
more like tilted to the side. Then we've got the shoulders
that are straight. The hips look like
they're kinda tilted up. Then the action line curves like this and then go straight down. I want to make sure I leave
enough room for her tall hat. Let me scale her down
just a little bit. I think that should be fine.
Alright. Then her right leg or the light that's on my right
is supporting the weight. So that's going to come down to the middle of
the action line. Then the foot. What kind of come towards
the center like this. And then her other leg
goes straight down, bends at the knee, and then straight down again. And her foot is pointed
with her toe on the ground. Again, I'm trying to use long slow strokes on
my pencil as much as I can because that ends up with a much smoother final product. So her left arm is also supporting some
weight as she leans back. That's going to
come straight down onto this wall or
fence or something. We can decide what it is later. And then her right arm is bent and the hand is at the hip. Her hand is in her
pocket in the photo. I don't know if I want
her to be holding something that might be cool. We'll decide when we get there. I'm also just going to add a little line in
a different color to remind me that
there's some sort of something that is supporting
her weight right there. Alright, so we've
got our frame layer, which I'm just going to
make a little bit lighter so I can sketch the
shapes on top of it. So remember we've got frame, which is the stick
figure, shapes, which is the outline
of the body, and then details clothing, hair, facial
features, et cetera. So right now we're
going to be sketching out the shapes of her body. So torso kind of
comes out like this, nips in at the waist and then
comes down to the pelvis. The ears will be like that. Oh, but they're pointed
because she's an elf. Will go up and then
come back down. I don't know yet if her hair or hat will cover
up the ears at all. I would like at least one of
them to be visible because otherwise you wouldn't know just from looking at
the drawing that. So we'll figure that out using really gently curving lines, almost completely straight
to express her arms. And some of this may be
covered up by the cape, but it's still really helpful to know what her arms are
doing underneath there. The perspective on this bent
leg is a little bit tricky. But don't worry if it's
not completely perfect. This sketch won't even end up in the final
drawing at all. It just needs to give
you a clear roadmap of what you're doing in further
layers of the drawing. Feel free to take it
slow and erase or undo. You need to. Okay. Now it's time to decide
what to do with her hands. I think I'm going to
keep this left hand supporting her like
it isn't a photo. And her knuckles are
pretty much lined up with the edge of the wall
that she's leaning on. And I think I'm actually
going to deviate from the stick figure and have
her arm extending out. Because one thing that I
talk about with her in the game that I really
enjoy is that she has, I'm just referencing her risk to the other risks to see if
it's about the same length. She has a jeweled walking stick. That's actually a magic staff that she uses to cast spells. And I would love to include
that in her drawing. So maybe it's like
a cut diamond shape And this is rough. I don't
have a reference for this. I'm just kinda figuring
it out as I go along, but I can clean it up
a little bit later. Yeah, I think that's a really
fun element to include. I'm just going to scoot the
whole drawing a little bit to the left now so that the whole drawing
is kinda centered. Okay, so that's the second
layer of our sketch. Now I'm gonna move
on to the third, and we can go ahead and
delete our original layer. And we'll add on the details. The colors I'm
sketching and really don't matter right now. They're just so I can
see the difference between the layers
that I'm working on. If you're working traditionally, it may be helpful to use
different colored pencils. We've got these amazing lapels, the kind of have some drama. The cape is going to
hug her shoulder and then come out almost
like a skirt. And it will just
end at the elbow a little or maybe a little bit below with little
V-shape like that. There's more code
that comes down and her sleeves will
end at the wrist. Maybe she has a little vest
or something that comes down underneath and kind
of mimics that v-shape. I imagined her pants
will be pretty form fitting because the top of
her outfit is really full. So the hand is high on one side and then angles
down on another side. That's kinda cool, very jaunty. And that way we can
still see this left ear. As I mentioned earlier, we're going to change this
had a little bit and have a point coming up
like a wizards hat. All that's left is to do
her face and her hair. I make my brush a
little bit smaller. And I'm just going to sketch out my construction lines
for the center of the face and then the center
of the face from ear to ear. Like but she's kinda
looking off to the side like maybe she sees
a clue over there. She's got these really thin
like arched 1940s browse. This very thin
like turnip knows. I don't want her to look
exactly like Veronica Lake. I'm just using that
as inspiration. And as I go, I'm just cleaning
up my construction lines. I want her to be
smiling because I think she's just
a fun character. To draw, an, a fun
character to play. She's always up for an adventure
to crack the next case. I'm trying to decide
which I want the hair to. I think we're gonna go with
the direction of the hat and have the little peekaboo
happening on this side. And it'll fall over her shoulder and kind of obscure that ear. Just got this really soft like old Hollywood waves going on. Alright, there she is. I'm just going to clean
up my sketch a little bit or erase anything
that's covered up by close or hair so that I don't get confused later
on when I'm working. Alright, so there's our sketch. Let's move on to
adding some color
4. Color: Alright, so it's time
to start adding color. Right now. I'm not worrying about shading
or texture or any of that. I'm just blocking
in solid colors. And since I'm working digitally, I'm changing layers as I go. I've got my sketch layer at
the top of the document. Everything else is
going to be underneath. I'm going to turn its
opacity down just a little bit so I can
see what I'm doing underneath a little bit
more clearly in the set my background color to
this dusty lavender. And I usually start
with skin and work my way up to clothing and hair. I'm not being particularly careful right now
because I can always clean this up with an
eraser and line art later. Surprise, Rosalind
has pink hair. I think this is just
a really fun detail about her that makes her feel more magical and fantasy games let you try out things that maybe you
wouldn't do in real life. And I guess having pink hair is one of those things for me. I always like to,
when I'm drawing hair at a few brush strokes that are kind of coming away from
the main shape on the edges. Every now and then I
like to check and see how things are looking
without the sketch. Because remember eventually we won't have this sketch
in here at all. I think I'm going
to come in and use the same dark purple on the hat. The color feels kind
of dull though. Can it be more saturated? Yeah, that feels better. I feel like her hat
could be pointier at the top instead of rounded
off the way I sketched it. You can always make changes
as you go like that. Just cleaning up the
edge of that shape, defining it a little bit more with I'm just grabbing
a lighter version of this purple for the suit that she's got
on underneath the cape. I think we could go
even lighter than that. Let's try right in there. Yeah, that looks good. For her little necktie. I want to pop up
something different. And Rosalind has
a younger sister in the game played by my friend, who wears a lot of blues. So maybe let's try blue as an accent color just to tie
the two sisters together. Alright, now we just need
to add colors to the cane. Go grab this purple
and pull it down into like almost ebony black. I'll make the little Jim
blue as well and we can add some more definition
to that later. Last but not least, she needs the whites of her
eyes to actually be white. And last but not least, I'm going to make my
brush really tiny because the whites of her eyes
actually need to be white. Alright, there are solid colors. Now we're going to start
bringing it to life with some texture and shading
5. Shading: Alright, we've got
our solid colors on, and now we can start
having some fun with shading texture pattern to start bringing this
drawing to life. I'm going to start
with the background. I've got a really big like
paint brushy texture at a low opacity that
I'm just going to brush over the background to
give it some fun texture. Taking a darker color
around the outsides, give it a vignette sort of feel. And don't worry, I'm
going to turn down the opacity on all
of this afterwards. So it'll be very subtle. You could totally render your background if you wanted to. I'm just going with
a pretty simple background for this drawing. Let's turn the opacity
down to about 45%. Yeah, I think that looks good. Now let's add in another layer and just block in this wall. I'm turning the opacity
way back up and we'll grab a gray from this
palette or help out. We grab the gray from this blue and get some
grayish blue stones and they're behind her. I'm going to let this wall
fade out into the background. Maybe we'll get some
smaller bricks just in a few places to give the
suggestion of a brick wall. And let's go ahead
and resize this to make it a little bit smaller. I think I'd like her hair
to be a little bit longer, so I'm just extending that here. You can always change your mind and make new decisions
as you're going. Alright, so now I'm just taking a dusty or shade of the purple
that I used for the suit. And I'm adding some shadows. So I'm just coming in
underneath this cape shape. And filling in this
shadow right underneath. It's time to start thinking about your drawing in a
three-dimensional way. Like what is in front
of other things, what's on top of other things, and what would be casting
shadows onto the shape below it. Same thing up here. The lapel is just sitting on
top of the rest of the code. So I'm coming underneath it
in a slightly darker shade of purple and adding just a
subtle little bit of shadow. You can definitely
do more in the way of shading then I'm doing here. I tend to keep things
pretty simple. But you could blend and add more gradients of shadow
if you wanted to. For the face, I
usually shade right underneath the jaw
line on the inside of the ear and sometimes the eyelids and
underneath the nose. I'm also thinking
about her hair which is in front of her face and that peekaboo style that
we talked about earlier. So that would be casting
shadows on her face and definitely the brim
of her hat here. And then we've got lipstick. I keep changing my mind about what color of lipstick
I want to do. This is always kind
of a fun stage. It feels like doing a
character's make up for them. Alright, that looks okay. So now I will add some darker and lighter pinks into the hair just to
give it some variation. Make it look like the light is hitting it in different ways. Just following those waves
here with the brush. Alright, that is
our shading done. So now all we have
to do is details
6. Details: So we've done our color and
we've done our shading. And the last step is to add
some details and line work. I'm switching my brush over to the six B pencil in Procreate. If I were working traditionally, this is where I'd grab a
colored pencil or a pen. And I'm coming into
the eyes first. I like to do the eyes
in a darker color. Then the rest of the skin maybe just a mimic the darkness
of the eyelashes, but also so that
they pull focus. And her eyes are blue. I'm pulling that blue from the neck tie
that I did earlier. Then just coming in underneath
for the bottom lash line. Those creases above
and underneath the eyes look a little too dark. Let me grab a brown color from the same palette as Ruskin, using that same color
on the nose here. And checking every so often to see how it looks without
the sketch layer. Because remember
we won't be using that in the final illustration. I'm noticing that some of
my pencil lines look a bit patchy without the
sketch layer on top of it. So I'm just going in and
darkening those again. Eyebrows. Looking good
without the sketch layer. And I'll come in and
add a little bit of definition to the lips. Continuing to use
this brown just as a linework color for her skin, Doing the jaw and the ear. And then we'll go in with
a dark pink on the hair. Just adding a few
pieces here and there. I used to feel the need to outline every single
element of my drawing. And now I tried to pull
back and be sparing with it just where it would be helpful and add a good
amount of contrast. Here on the hat is
a good example. I am outlining the brim because that's going to pull
focus towards her face. But I'm only going to outline
one side of the hat because the dark purple
really already has a nice contrast with the
light purple background. Alright, a little definition
here on the neck tie. And continuing to fill in the dual top on
her walking stick. Here on the hands. I'm just taking my time and following my sketch
really closely. Hands are still
difficult for me. But with practice they're
getting easier and easier. Continuing with this
dark purple on the suit, again, I don't feel the need to outline every single part of it, just where it would
help the viewer understand what's going
on in the picture, especially with this funky
little leg of the pose. I'm paying a little
extra attention to that. Now I'm coming in and adding
some detail to the cuffs. And I kinda like how the outline floats away a little bit
from this leaf shape. And then I'm grabbing
my same blue from the blue accent
colors and adding a little bit of
embroidered detail on the bottom of the cape. And this is just a
little arrow heart shape that I doodle a lot. And adding that to the
brim of the hat as well. I think it matches her
eyes really nicely. And a tiny bit on the
edge of the boots. And that is gonna be the last detail on my
character portrait of Roslyn. Join me in the next one for
some additional characters.
7. More Examples: Ash: So before we finish, I want to include a few more examples of
different types of characters. So my friend Joshua kindly allowed me to
draw his character, ash. He's a dark elf. He's a cleric. He's very mysterious and kind of scholarly and has a lot of motifs about his
character related to stars in the night sky. So for his pose, I chose this painting called Portrait of a monk by a
symphonies but angry Sola, who was a Renaissance painter. And I flipped it horizontally so that it's
facing the other way. And it was a really fun
reference to use because it was a painting that I didn't
know anything about before. And it really captured
ashes personality to me. One thing that this
painting was really helpful for was the crossed hands. That was a huge challenge, but also something
that I just think ash would do if he's thoughtful, maybe having his fingers
crossed in front of him. So I definitely relied a lot on the painting when I was making
this part of the sketch. The hair was also a
lot of fun to draw. I got this reference
photo from Pexels, which is an open
source image website. But I decided to give him
more prominent widow's peak, maybe because that reminds
me of The Monsters. Other kind of spooky,
mysterious characters. His hair is much straighter
than Roslyn was. I'm barely curving
my lines at all, just kinda doing a lot of parallel lines with
my brush here. I kept ashes color
palette really cool. I knew because he was a
dark elf that he would have this dark
charcoal gray skin. And then because he has
the night sky motif, I chose a lot of
blues and purples, which went really well with
the gray, in my opinion. For the cloak, I chose
a dark blue base color and then added a bunch of
blobs in different colors. What I wanted to do was
achieved a galaxy effect. So I made a clipping mask
in Procreate and added a bunch of blobs of
different blues and purples over top of the dark
blue that I began with. And then I use the Liquify
function in Procreate to swirl the colors around and make it look
like a night sky. So it was very fun to manipulate those
colors and get a cool, subtle texture, galaxy
texture on his cloak. And after I finished
swirling the colors around, I did turn down the
opacity of this layer. So it was a very subtle effect. While I was drawing
the hooded cow thing from the portrait of the monk
that I showed you earlier. I had the idea because
he's a cleric, so a warrior priest, that what if his
little cow that were part of his priests rows were
actually made of chainmail. This is another
photo from Pexels of just some chain mail
and the different ways that it reflects the light. So I started with
a base gray layer on that and then
added a bunch of tiny rings of light
gray and dark gray to get some
dimension of color. It was a tedious process, but the effect was worth it. Then it was just a matter of
penciling in the details. Of course, we have some
cool like white eyebrows. And I use the dark blue pencil for pretty much everything else, including his skin details. But especially here where the chain mail hoods sits
on top of the cloak. He also has an amulet that is a symbol of the deity
that he follows. And so I made that gold to contrast from the Silver
of the chain mail hood. Using that same goal to add
just a little bit of detail to the sleeves and to
the bottom of the cloak. And just one tiny brush stroke there to make the amulet look shiny in a later gold and
a little bit on the chain. All right, that is my
finished portrait of ash. I'm going to attach
the full time lapse, but keep watching. We're going to tackle a couple of other
types of characters, including a known
and a DragonBoard.
8. More Examples: Noori: Alright, for our next
example character, I wanted to include
a character that was part of a is short heritage. So she is the character
of my friend Madeline. She's a known, she's a
baker and an inventor, and she's really
smart and carrying. She's kinda the mom
of the group that we're playing with for the pose. This is a photo of a child, which I thought would
be really helpful for the known proportions
that she's still person, She's just a little bit
smaller and more compressed. Proportion lies. For
a clothing reference, I found this really
cool apron from the Victoria and Albert Museum. They have a lot of great
historical costume photos. And I thought this apron really
reflected her as a baker, but I actually turned it into a jumpsuit overall
situation which fits her as an
adventure for her face. Whenever I imagine
Norris face and my mind, I think of the British
actress Masie Williams. And this is a photo of her
from Wikimedia Commons. She has these really cute like
facial features around it knows these large like wide set eyes and these
super thick eyebrows. I wasn't trying to copy
her face necessarily, but I think her face just
feels like no worries. Me if I could cast someone to play nori and a
movie of our game, I think it would
be Masie Williams. So I chose a light
pink background for noise portrait just
because she's really feminine and sweet and carrying. And then I struggled a lot with the colors
on her clothing. You can see that I changed it five or six times until I landed on something
that I finally liked. So I ended up going with light blue for her top and a darker, dusty or pink for her
apron slash overalls. And then I used a clipping mask. I use a lot of clipping
masks in my work in general, but in these drawings
in particular, and used my big brush that
I used for the background to create a plaid
overlay on her apron. The details stage for
Nohria was fun and kind of unique because in
addition to her line art, I also got to come in and add some patches of flour
all over her outfit. This is something that
Madeline talks about a lot that Worry is always
covered in flour. So I came in with this
kind of spray paint brush and brushed some white flower onto her knee,
onto her shoulder. And then also smudged on some mechanical oil onto
her face and her clothing. So trying to capture that messy balance of being
both a baker and an inventor, which is just adorable.
I love this character. She's super fun to draw. So that is it for
Norris portrait. Here is the full time
lapse of everything that I did in our last example. I'm going to be drawing a
DragonBoard and barbarian
9. More Examples: Naami: So this last character
I'm going to draw belongs to my sister Katie. This is NAMI, she's
a red dragon born. She's a barbarian, so she's
really tough and impulsive. She's little bit haunted, and Katie plays her with an
Eastern European accent. For the pose, I found
this amazing photo from Wikimedia Commons of a
female shot put athlete. And I love using reference
photos of athletes. One, because the poses can
be so active like this. You can see that she's
standing on 1 ft and swinging out the other getting ready
to throw this object, I decided to make it Iraq
in the final drawing. And then she's
also, you can tell just by looking at
her that she's spent so much time honing her body and becoming so strong for this sport that she's
participating in. And I think that's a
really good modern-day equivalent for fantasy
and venturers. For the face, I had
a hard time finding some really good
reference for dragons, but I ended up landing on
this photo from Unsplash, which is an open source image
website of a Komodo dragon. So we have the ai's
vary widely set apart. This mouth that snakes all
the way around the head. And this almost snout with
the two slit like nostrils. And then I added a few spiky
bits at the top of the head. That's a very technical
term for them. Spiky bits to make her
look a little more like a fantasy Dragon and less like a dragon that we
have in the real-world. Because Katie plays NAMI with
an Eastern European accent, I wanted nominees close to reflect some of the folk
clothing from Eastern Europe. So this little embroidered
vest is from Poland, and then this blouse and the stack of necklaces
are from Ukraine. These two reference photos are both from Wikimedia Commons. And I love all the texture of the embroidery and the layers of jewelry and the
bright colors. And I did end up making a few
changes of my own as well. So on her blouse I decided to make it short sleeved
rather than long-sleeved. Still a little bit goofy. I added some braces
to her arms as well. I felt like that would make more sense that she would
want her arms to be free because she's fighting
and woman of action. And I did eventually decide to. You'll see this later
in the video at the bottom of her vest
where it is scalloped, I chose to make those edges pointy instead because she's
a sharp, tough character. Tsunami is a red dragon born. I chose a lot of red
and orange and brown, a lot of warm colors, kind of a contrast to the cool colors that
I used for Ash. And then I got to come in and add some embroidery
onto the vest. This is fun actually
because Katie, my sister who plays NAMI, does embroidery in real life. So that's kind of
a nod to her art. In mine. Her necklace is where some of the last details I added in, I went with more gold, one pop of these
turquoise beads, and then chose the same
white from her shirt for the necklace that is haunted and part of
the story of our game. So I tried to keep
it pretty simple. I just went with a brown
like wooden pendant and a white skull on top of it so that even if you didn't
know anything about the game, you could look at the
drawing and say, Well, oh, there's something wrong
with this necklace. Then the very last
thing I did was to add a few subtle
suggestions of scales. I didn't go all over
the skin with this. Just I had to skin shades, essentially the light
red and the darker red. And I added a few light red
spots in the dark red shadows and vice versa to give the
impression of texture. So that is going to
finish this off for nominees drawing and also
for our example characters. I could keep going
all day because I love drawing fantasy characters, but enjoy the time-lapse of nominees drawing
and then join me in the last lesson for a few more thoughts before
you do your class project
10. Conclusion: Well, I had a ton of fun drawing my fantasy characters today
and I hope that you did too. I would love to see
how yours turned out. So please share your
finished drawing in the project gallery with maybe a few notes about how
you're drawing time went. And I'd be happy
to follow up with some specific feedback for you. I'd also love to stay in touch. I am at any draws things on Instagram, Facebook
and Pinterest. And you can find my
blog and my newsletter over an anti Parsons ahrq.com. Thank you for watching this. You need to sell much
Annie Parsons, Art and Creativity
