DTIYS Submission 1
A submission that I did for one of those 'Draw This In Your Style' (DTIYS) challenges that are very popular on Instagram! The original drawing that mine is based on, by an artist who goes by the handle @DessinsDelucy on Insta, is a simple waist-up shot of the character and their cat, which left me with a lot of license to come up with more content for my take on it. The original image featured striking use of a pink background colour, so I tried to capture this with the rather surreal choice of colours in the background.
I don't feel I have a definitive style as such, and what I found particularly interesting about the process of this painting is how many styles the character seemed to go through as the painting went on. They went through phases of looking like they belonged in children's book illustration, anime, and classic Disney animated movies before landing on what, to me, looks like a more contemporary advertisement illustration style.
The painting was achieved in a somewhat greyscale-to-colour approach, with me making a simple shadow version and ambient occlusion version and then combining them together and applying colour over them and then painting over the combined layers to finalise it all.
The final, made-for-Insta, submission for DessinDelucy's 'Draw This In Your Style' challenge
My initial rough sketch
The rough sketch with colour added, giving it the appearance of a children's book illustration
The fine line drawing of the character and their cat. The pink background colour was chosen as DessinDelucy's original featured pink prominently
The fine line drawing with local colours added, giving it some serious 1970's/80's anime vibes!
With some simple shading added, it took that anime look and suddenly gave it an early Disney look
The background blocked in and some revisions made to the shading
Close to the final piece now, with the buildings shaded more appropriately and with further foreground detail added
This is the ambient occlusion version of the character that I used to create the 3D feel of the character and her cat: looking not too dissimilar to things that I've churned out of Maya in the past!
This shaded version was also made to bolster the 3D feel of the whole thing. This and the ambient occlusion version would be combined to make the final shadow pass
Here 's the ambient occlusion and shadow passes combined. It was a good starting point to add colour to, but would have further lighting effects added over it later to create the final piece
And, for good measure, here's a value version!