Video - Digital Painting Process - Haunt

A lot of times I like to screen record my digital painting process so that way I can look back at it myself and also share my process with others in hopes that it'll help. I usually only record speedpaintings because that's only an hour or 2 of video, but sometimes I'll record full illustrations.

This piece is of the character Haunt, created by Todd McFarlane. He was holding a contest for Haunt and the winner would get published in an issue of the comic. I was lucky enough to make the top 15 semi finalists along with my friend Danny Morales, but we were both unable to make finals and get published. Either way I had a lot of fun doing this piece.

The reason I recorded this was because I wanted to show how I can paint something semi-realistic, without a "real" reference of this character. There's no Haunt movie or any realistic depictions of Haunt online so I had to improvise.

First of all, realism in art is ALWAYS based on the way light effects something. The better you can understand light, the more real you can make anything look. For example, look at any Pixar movie. They take cartoony designs and bring them into a 3D world with advanced lighting that makes the characters real and believable.

Secondly, different textures are effected differently by lighting. This is a common mistake I see all the time. People will light metal the same way they light cloth, the same way they light leather. For this piece, before I even started I had to think about what this character is made of. I came to the conclusion that all the white parts of his costume were made of rubbery, slimy, bone matter. I came up with "liquid bone" as a way to describe it. I wanted it to look like it's strong enough to protect him, but fluid enough to morph and change and wrap around him organically. To make this texture believable, I couldn't paint it the same as I painted his skin. Because his skin is not slimy or gross. If I painted his whole body like his skin, he'd look like a dull 3D model with simple lighting and no rendering or textures. So I studied slimy, shiny gross objects. You've got to do paint studies of textures you're going to use, because this way you can get an understanding of how it works with light before you go into your painting.

So really, realism "from your head" is as simple as understanding light, and how surfaces are lit. To get better at this just takes painting different textures/lighting scenarios from life. Trying to get the colors right and light the different textured surfaces right.

I hope that helps! Keep drawing! Here's the video