PSD Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3jdeo85g2u0jt91/Laurel-Corcoran_Kiss.psd.zip?dl=1
Let’s take a walk through this recent piece I did for A Viper in the Court.
This scene depicts a pivotal moment in the story where Laurel, intending to sneak up on and kill Corcoran, decides instead to pursue her own desires and kisses him instead.
This piece marked some new territory and progress for me in a variety ways — facial expression, skin rendering, composition, storytelling, and more. I’ve also started to incorporate quick Blender ideas for references whenever I can’t find good ones online. Let’s take a dive into the first phase: the thumbnail sketches.
With this scene, the primary challenge was finding a framing that checked all of the following boxes:
- It had to show both characters’ faces and expressions
- It had to clearly demonstrate the action of the story, and the tension therein
- It had to subtly communicate the emotions of the characters
We decided to go for #6, so the expressions of the characters could be shown more clearly. This was also a more intimate framing, to match the characters’ own viewpoints.
Once the sketch was picked, I went over with a line art pass. This is a new step I’ve been implementing in my works recently (credit to Hardy Fowler who put me on to this idea).
The intent here is to make clear, decisive design decisions sooner in the process, rather than trying to design and/or refine during the painting phase. Knowing exactly where shapes begin and end, how expressions are being articulated, and exactly how things fit together before dealing with color and value frees up mental space later on in the process.
I also refined the composition here, and made sure that all shapes and lines were somehow leading towards our main point of focus—the point of contact between the characters’ faces.
Then comes the underpainting. I had to make decisions about value and lighting here, and how they set the mood. I chose a strong warm backlight/rim light and a cool blue-violet fill light to indicate it as a night scene with some kind of fire/manmade light source.
Choosing a softer fill light also puts most of the image in shadow, thus increasing once again the intimate feel.
In doing so I also set up a striking complimentary color scheme between yellow-orange and blue-violet which is expanded upon later in the painting.
As I mentioned, I also created this quick scene in Blender as a lighting reference, which ended up being immensely helpful. I found subtly lighting both faces without a clear, direct light source quite challenging, so I used these “dummy heads” to show me exactly how that might work with the different planes of the face.
Finally, it was all down to the final polish—pushing the lighting, contrast, and refining some of the smaller details, especially around the faces, so the expressions could really pop.
I created stronger subsurface scattering on the hair, introducing a vibrant orange color to further direct attention towards the focal area.
And that brings us to our final painting! Of course, there’s so much more to talk about here, and I’ll be discussing all of it in detail in my upcoming tutorial video on this piece (plus a full time lapse video for those of you who just want to see the process).
If you haven’t yet, make sure you upgrade so you can see those.
Catch you next time!
Eben