Fool's Moon
Fool's Moon began as a rough sketch while I was trying to sketch out character poses. The character poses eventually turned into a full fledged character, and I felt that it would be a good time to try an artwork where the background plays well with the character.
Hence, Fool's Moon is an artwork that focuses on using the background as a way to enhance the artwork.
REFERENCES
With the character resembling a space marine, I thought it would be fitting to pick a space like background to go along with it. Since the character is going to be black and white, It would be better to pick something colorful, hence I decided to go for a galaxy background.
Although it may look simple, a galaxy has many details hidden behind it. Every different colors in the galaxy are not just spread out in a flat color with a watercolor look, but have points where the colors are more pronounced. This gives the galaxy its depth, and also shows how the stars spread around light in a galaxy.
The colors are also not always blending with one another, but rather keeping its own shape at times, which also creates more depth. Galaxies also have a smoky effect that is important to take note of.
SKETCHING
A rougher sketch as compared to the DOOM sketch as a result of not having a reference. The sketch also looks rougher due to a more relaxed posture when sketching. While doing the DOOM sketch, I realized that I was too uptight on the sketch, and treated it like I was lining instead of doing a sketch.
Hence, I tried to draw more vaguely first and darkening the line only when there was a distinct shape to be drawn. This technique definitely created something that looks more like a sketch and allowed me to constantly make adjustments more easily.
LINING
With the character being in black and white, lining is not too complicated as compared to the DOOM lining.
Mistakes were still made, with the helmet being colored in a line layer. I had the right idea of coloring the helmet separately from the body, but still did it in a layer I should have avoided.
Colouring
For the coloring of the character, I used a technique known as scribbling that I learnt back in secondary school. Scribbling is a technique where you move your pen in a circular motion at various speeds, creating a random but controlled look. When an area has to be darker or light, you scribble more or less in that area respectively.
Since the character is going to be in front of a detailed background, scribbling emphasizes the character and helps it to be apparent to the audience.
Same mistakes were made from the DOOM artwork, where coloring from the galaxy bleed into the layer for the character's color.
Background
As stated in the reference section earlier, a galaxy consists of many components. To create the base colors of the galaxy, I first used a large brush to spread around 4 different colors.
The next step was to spread the colors around using the blend tool for the smoky effect, but wanting to not have galaxy constantly blend into each other, I used black at some areas to have a clear separation.
Blending can cause some color to become lighter, thus to create the ares that are highlighted more, I colored some edges to create that effect,
The stars were easily added with the Kyle's splatter brushes. To help the background fit in naturally with the character, I added a white glow effect by creating a white silhouette slightly bigger than the character.
As a result, there is a background that fits in way better with the other objects in the artwork, an improvement over the DOOM artwork.
THINGS TO TAKE AWAY
When sketching, try not draw with lesser force and only have more pressure when lines need to be more defined.
Create more layers, separate different parts more clearly to create a more organised workflow.