The Frog Prince

I finished my first entry for the CGHub challenge "Fairy Tales reinvented", that quickly became an entry for the Art Order challenge as well, with Schindehette's permission.
I chose the Frog Prince tale, but I didn't really reinvent it, I just once again focused on little symbols and hidden meanings, naughty humour and such. Nothing that the tale itself doesn't already implicitly represent.
That's why I think it suits the ArtOrder challenge much more than its CGHub counterpart and I'm now drawing an Alice in Wonderland reinterpretation for that.

Anyway, here's the Frog Prince.

Original height is a little over 6000 pixels. The entire illustration was fairly straightforward and smooth except for the girl. I redrew her completely at least 3 times, due to anatomical problems and such. As usual I never start with reference. I adopt it through the process if necessary.
Since I have the "bad" habit of picking weird angles I had to use some reference for the head and shoulders, but had to make the rest up.
Hands are based on reference too (my own hands) for realism and style purposes.

Since I start moving more and more towards realism I notice my need for reference is gradually increasing, but I will never start anything with reference. Whenever I did that I noticed it killed my vision of the piece, it constrained me to what I was seeing in the reference, becoming a true obstacle.
I also don't particularly like how something entirely based on reference looks like. It feels like it's not my own work, it feels alien and depressing.
The least reference I use the best it is for me. These are personal choices and I disagree with those who promote using reference whenever we encounter a little problem.
Our memory is filled with precise images of the entire world, we just don't have access to it with great lucidity, but it's there. We can train to access it and to refresh those memories though.
First I try to figure out what I've done right. Once I know why I've failed on what looks bad I look for help (opinions, reference).
If we don't give ourselves the chance of failing through research we'll always be reference-slaves. It's good to research and experiment when doing personal work or contests with generous deadlines (most are).

The Fanatic

Hi everyone,

this is my first post here, so I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm an alien with italian passport, currently living and working in Hong Kong drawing stuff for kids.
After years of this I clearly became more and more mentally unstable, which led me to release my tensions through fantasy and creepy digital paintings in my spare time.
My portfolio and blog is at www.creationspot.com

This is my latest digital painting, titled "The Fanatic".



I'll show you the process, just in case you're curious.

I started with the usual round of thumbnails.
I lost the final one, because it quickly became the actual painting itself, but you can see some of the early stages of the concept.

I wanted to portray a member of some creepy sect venerating a tentacular godly being.



These are more or less the WIP stages, but the actual process has been more troublesome than what appears to be here, because I thought I had finished the painting while it was still clearly rough and undefined. That's what stress can do sometimes.
Getting feedback from people helped me as a cold shower and I realized I still had tons of work to do and I finished it.

As usual, I had no reference to start with. I tend to work without figure reference from the start and if necessary I collect it through the process if I find myself stuck.
In this case I badly needed something for the background and I couldn't find anything like that.
I found photos of cathedrals and such. They helped a bit but I still had to figure out everything by myself, perspective and angles included.

It was a pain for a while, but since I usually have trouble with architecture I guess I'm quite happy with the result and I hope I'll be more confident next time.
My focus of interest is always anatomy and figure, but it's good to practice on other things occasionally.