How it was made: The Road to Errogie

[Nyil]

So, this was actually a pretty popular piece, so I'm going to put up a little step-by-step of how it was done. I'm not really going to be going over precise details of my technique for this, but rather, the concepts behind why I did some of the things I did, since I think that would be a lot more helpful for some folks. For this entire walkthrough, I'd like to put a lot of emphasis on the flexibility of art, and how it can take a different turn at any moment. It's important to keep your art alive, as it keeps it interesting for you, and therefore your viewers.

During this tutorial, I'm also going to be listing the playlist I was listening to and the tunes I added to it as the painting progressed, as I feel this is an important part to my process - if I'm really feeling a painting, I tend to create a playlist around what I feel that piece feels like, and it helps me get more in the mood and more absorbed into the painting.

So, before I go on, I should probably list off programs, brushes, canvas size and what have you. For this entire piece, I used Photoshop CS5, with the basic set of round brushes used at varying opacities and hardnesses. I tend to sketch and do basic color layers with opacity at 60-80% (brush settings set at hardness = pressure, size = pressure), with hardness at 100%, while painting after that will find my brushes at around 40-60% hardness, 80% opacity.

So, starting canvas dimensions:
Width: 10 inches
Height: 11 inches
DPI: 400


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidhthing.jpg
I start off by filling in the canvas with a ruddy gray-orange color, something dark. I'm not really sure what kind of direction I want to take this in, so I take a random color (in this case red) and just splotch it in over the background. I'm still not really sure where I want to take this, so I start doodling random scenes in white over this, until I find something I'm in the mood for. Finally, something sort of sticks, and I sketch it very roughly in.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidhthing-1.jpg
I think this sorta fits in well with the current background colors, and looks like it could be pretty cool. For the moment, I think this is what I'm going to go for.

Now, I'm betting some people are wondering why I'm sketching in white, rather than black. As a digital painter, it is important for me to eliminate lineart entirely from the piece that I am working on, and since white tends to just look wrong as lineart, I have an easier time conceptualizing the painting as a painting with white sketches. The white lines also help me think in shades, and encourage me to use high contrasts and really define my shapes from the very beginning of the piece, so I waste no time in getting defined shapes.

Now that I have my figure decided, I start to fill in my background. Purple is a cool, stormy color, so I decide to use some of that, and browns for a rocky background, to see how that looks.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidhoffshoot.jpg
At this point, as all my colors are still pretty blobby and I can guess shapes out of them that aren't necessarily intended (Kind of like seeing shapes in clouds - the cloud outside of my window kind of looks like Donald Trump's hair), I start looking at things differently. The background so far doesn't really seem appropriate to the lineart, it's way too calm. At this point, iTunes decides to play The Road to Errogie, by Flook, and as if by accident, I start to see a road here. I delete the lineart layer, and start throwing colors on the canvas as fast as I can to make it look like a road.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidhoffshoot-1.jpg
I like how this looks a lot more than my angel.  I even add some clouds - they're not yet the oddly shaped clouds I'm known for, but rather, a kind of placeholder so I know what colors I'm using. I like this idea, a lot, so I think it's time to add a character. I tend to like to add characters to huge fantastic landscapes, as they add a sense of scale to the piece, so you can tell just how big or small the landscape is. Characters really help us relate to otherwise completely unrelatable landscapes, and since there is no way in hell my landscapes exist in reality, I have to add a character or two.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidhoffshoot-2.jpg
I decide to add a wanderer type character with a long staff. I'm not quite sure what species I want to make him yet, or what his clothes might be, or anything. All I know is that he's a dude with a staff. He's probably going to be a silhouette, so I don't waste time adding too many details.

It's at this point I take a break, and start to build up a playlist for this, since I'm getting pretty into it. So far, the playlist includes:
Road to Errogie, Flook
Tortoise and the Hare, Flook
Flying and Flocking, Zoe Keating
We Insist, Zoe Keating
Wrong Foot Forward, Flook
(All of these are on YouTube, in case anyone is interested)

So, I come back, and suddenly the main pose looks boring. I don't know what to do about it quite yet, so I start to work on the background. Suddenly, I remember reading an old animator's technique about drawing Keys. Here's the quote, from digital painter and animator Aly Fells:

"Capture those moments. When designing strong character poses in illustration and creating a good silhouette, refer to animation. This discipline works on a series of 'Keys', which are often the extremes or most acute part of a movement and usually the strongest moments in any gesture. Analyze a cartoon frame by frame to find these moments and see how they capture expression more than the other positions. Alternatively, look at character sheets of animated features that are available in animation books or online." - Aly Fells

I take a moment and realize that the character's pose is pretty weak, and if he were a silhouette, no one would know what was going on. I rework the pose a little, to make it more dramatic and to capture more movement.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoerrogie.jpg
Now THAT is a dramatic pose.

The harp staff actually came about from a slip of my hand while I was drawing in the staff. I thought it actually looked pretty cool, so I just went with it.

I've decided I really want to emphasize and exaggerate the emphasis of distance and perspective, so I make the difference between the foreground and the background really extreme in contrast - the background, near the end of the road, is going to be near the bright sun, so that is going to be light in color, while the foreground, near where the character is, will be very dark. I don't like adding highlights and intense lights in too early in the painting, as I feel it makes things look too shiny and plastic looking, so for now, I just add the dark blue shadows and a few highlights so I actually remember what's going on.

I decide to make these clouds a little wispier and thinner than I normally do, so I draw a lot of spirals to compensate and make them more interesting.

New additions to the playlist:
Famine Song, Academy of Irish Music
Alexa's Farewell, Academy of Irish Music
Sir Arthur Shaen, Academy of Irish Music
Souter Creek, Flook
The Old Bush/The Reel with the Burl, Martin Hayes


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidh.jpg
It's at this point I decide I want my main character to be a cat like thing, so I draw in the muzzle, ears, tail, and scarf like thing. I color him in, and waste no time in adding dark shadows to make him look like part of the scene. It's important that his shadows are very, very dark, since they add a sense of 'the character is in the very back, with me' to the viewer.

At this point, I've also added some jagged rocks around the edges of the painting, in dark blue. This kind of framing, in my experience, helps pull the viewer into the painting, and helps them almost experience the painting as if they were there. I've also added in some dark stick figures in the background, since I don't want our hero to be completely alone. It helps add to the story, I feel, that the character has a party to travel with.

On a side note, I added the figures close to the head of the main figure so that they eye would perceive the cluster as one shape, then spend time examining the shapes and sorting them out. This is a technique from the old painter Howard Pyle - he insisted that the fewer tonal masses you have, the simpler your painting is, the easier it is to understand and therefore the better it is. I could have spaced the figures out, but I didn't. Pyle, as a painter, tended to unify shapes and tonal masses by connecting them with an enveloping shadows, or by connecting light areas.

"Put your whites against whites, middle tones against greys, black against black, then black and white where you want your centre of interest." - Howard Pyle

I also feel that putting the figures so close together adds a sense of perspective and drama. On another note, I'm also incredibly lazy and didn't feel like painting three more figures in with a lot of detail, so I made them tiny silhouettes and told myself it was for the drama of the painting.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidh-1.jpg
I begin to paint over my white lines so I get a better sense of the main figure, and add definition to the clouds overhead and the rocks in the foreground. Because they're closest to the viewer, and I really, really, REALLY want to push that sense of perspective, the foreground is going to have more detail than the background. The foreground is going to have a wider range of color and shadows, brighter colors and darker shadows, while the background is going to have a narrower range of color, shadows and details. This is a pretty common technique for digital painters, and I'm really exaggerating it to push that sense of perspective.

I decrease the opacity of the sketch, so I can still vaguely see the borders, but can no longer rely on them to hold my figure together.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidh-2.jpg
My figure can stand alone without the lineart now, so I hide the layer - I don't delete it, in case I need to go back to reference it.

I add a sun to the foreground at the end of the road, and define the figures. I throw Mao in there as the head of the part with the spear, just because he likes these landscapey type things.

I also make the edges of the sky a much darker blue, to push the contrast of the setting sun, and to increase that sense of framing hinted at with the rocks. I'm making the focal points of the image pretty blatant here, so the eye knows exactly where to travel.


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidh-3.png
I've decided to add some stars to the black sky, because I think stars are pretty.

I'm again feeling lazy, so I take a picture of my desk and some dirt with my phone, and overlay them onto the rocks and dirt road, and warp them to fit the purpose (edit -> transform -> warp). I set the layer modes to Hard Light, and reduce the opacity down to about 30%, and paint over them a bit in another layer to make them look more like part of the painting. I also erase them the further away they get from the viewer, because again, I'm pushing that sense of perspective, and we can't see that many tiny details far away from us.

Added to the playlist:
2001 suite, Academy of Irish Music
Martin Rochford's/Green Gowned Lass, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill
Gone Fishing, Flook
Prince Charles' Last View of Scottland, Alasdair Fraiser and Natalie Haas
Padraig's, Flook
The Parting, Baal Tinne


http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae343/Nyil_Hegedu/roadtoearaghaidh-3.png
I continue to refine and clean up the edges of the image, and push contrasty bits, until...



I get my finished image.

Full sizes:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7718722/
http://mouseymachinations.deviantart.com/#/d4v5pra
https://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=226014
http://www.nabyn.com/art/road-to-earaghaidh-44412

Thank you all for sticking with me for this whole walkthrough, I hope it helps!

[Ignuus66]

Great Hiwm, But now I'm suddenly interested in the clouds outside your window. (srsly how can clouds look like donald trump's hair?  )

[Nyil]

Great Hiwm, But now I'm suddenly interested in the clouds outside your window. (srsly how can clouds look like donald trump's hair?  )

Clouds can look like Donald Trump's hair when I've refilled my drink ~_~