Fire spirit

Sketch portrait of the Fire Spirit, from Aftyn’s Elemental friends. She’s a bit of a pyromaniac, a trait I suspect is shared by Aftyn herself.

Getting the lighting to look right in this picture took a surprising number of false starts. My rough guide to shadows, with lightly hashed blobs, looked pretty good to me, but I was unable to make a more finalized version of it look right. I tried probably a half dozen versions of hashing, trying to get them to work.

Part of the struggle is a result of that match. Broad coverage with this red tone just was not reading as “skin” like the orange hashes on the Air Spirit did. I couldn’t leave the skin untextured, though. It needed to stand out from the brightness of the fire. In the end, I tried bringing the charcoal fill I’ve been using for the borders and hair in this series, and it looked all right.

This particular portrait had what I think is my best first sketch attempt. The process video won’t show me making it, unfortunately, as I abandoned a whole branch of attempts on this and started over with just that layer in a fresh file. It wasn’t the start of something new, though. My very next sketch was a complete failure!

Check out sketch 1, complete with shade guides.