Taste of my blood, beloved, and join me in eternity
This is a detailed pencil rendering of Aftyn Rose as a vampire, offering you an invitation to immortality. I drew it digitally in Artstudio Pro. The pose is referenced from her Instagram account, with some pretty significant liberties taken.
After my last pencil drawing, I had a little tickle in the brain. I wanted to see what it would look like with a simple highlight color. I know I said I wasn’t going to keep chasing details, but I allowed myself one more. Rather than produce another rendition of that same pose, I picked a different reference, one that emphasized fishnet stockings, which were a challenge to draw, let me tell you!
Tangent: I have this notion that the AI content generator world we live in now is going to require artists “show their work” to prove they are not prompting their way through life. In light of that, I have saved several in progress shots of this work to show you how it changed over its course.
I began here, with a quick sketch that is a direct translation of the reference photo, with some additional white accenting.
Revision 1
I then took a step back from it, looked at it without the reference. It was good, but it felt like it was missing something. It had the white highlights, but when applying them, I recognized that I hadn’t gone into that with a solid plan. I hadn’t decided “this value range will get the midtone value” (i.e: the paper color), these are shadows, and those are highlights. Without such a plan, it wound up kind of confused and muddy. This is a long-standing challenge for me.
I decided what this particular piece needed was a lighting overhaul. I wanted to do something dramatic! I wanted terminator lines — the darker boundary between light and shadow particularly evident on her thighs in the finished piece. I wanted lost edges. I wanted her to be a vampire! For selfish reasons, I decided I also wanted her to be nude but for the fishnets. It’s been a long time since I last undressed my favorite subject.
I did another pass, choosing a different facial reference and winging my way through an updated arm/hand pose. Our vampire lady had partially turned you and was offering her own neck so you could finish the job.
Revision 2
I struggled with this one. No particular element seemed wrong exactly, but it just didn’t hold together. I kept working at for a couple days, but in time I gave up on that vision. I returned to the original face, but changed her hair style to be more like her Spoopy vampire roleplay.
Revision 3
I then started working on dramatizing the light and shadow.
Revision 4
Satisfied I was onto something here, I started over with a less sketchy hand. I completed a pass with subtle pencil shading, some terminator lines, and some blood red accenting. I thought this looked pretty good.
Revision 5
But then I gave it a day to set. The next day I again hid the reference and gave it a fresh examination. What did it need? Bolder choices with respect to the lighting. Her hair and breasts needed some anatomical adjustment. The choker needed to be shifted to better describe where her neck was and the angle of her torso. It needed some texture on the bed beneath her to ground it all.
In the end, I think this piece turned out pretty good! It’s a bit sexy, a bit enticing. I think the lighting works. The imagined bits are credible. It was a lot of fun to work on and I’m proud of the result.
But now, I really need to get back to painting.
Medium: Digital
App: Artstudio Pro
Tools: Pencil, charcoal