Ognjen Sporin

Pumpkin Knight Breakdown/Tips

Added 2021-07-27 14:32:18 +0000 UTC

I did this image as a collab with a friend - here's his original drawing that I painted over:

Get rid of bad ideas early! - it's hard to overstate how important that is. Here's how I initially started this painting:

I thought I wanted to focus on mood and atmosphere, so I kept all the values mostly in the dark grays, successfully losing the strong impact of the silhouette. I had to step back and ask myself what's the best quality of the drawing - and when I realized it's the shapes, I also knew that in order to keep their impact, I need a strong silhouette, so I opted for a very different value grouping - pretty much the opposite of what I had in Gandalf; all the values in the silhouette were very dark, save for a few highlights for the reflections and lights coming from the pumpkin.

I needed strong contrast for the silhouette, but I still got some moodiness through all the fog and atmospheric perspective in the background, so it was a good balance altogether, and an interesting experience :D

When in doubt, clarify your intention! Once you're more certain about what effect you want, only then will you know how to get to it.