Making of Bodyguard

This picture was created for an online challenge called “Monster in love”, where it won one of the four Honor Mentions. In the original idea the girl was different (Sketch), but while the painting were going forward I decided to change her.

STEP 1: Sketch

In the original idea the girl was different (Sketch), but while the painting were going forward I decided to change her.

I have two main referentes for the monster figure: a head of african hippopotamus and a male model with big muscle mass.

STEP 2

I started to paint the head of the hippopotamus using different standard brushes in one layer for all the head and another layer for the eye (Screen 01, Screen 02).

After to paint the main colored zones with pinks and khaki, I started to add details like pores and wrinkles with different thin brushes with low oppacity (Screen 03, Screen 04, Screen 05, Screen 06).

STEP 3

For to paint the eye, I used different layers, for the ocular globe and the light spots, and then I did combine all in one. As in the rest of the picture, I used standard brushes with different opacities (Screen 07).

STEP 4

The next step was to paint the little hairs in the snout with very thin brushes and different tones, depending of the light (Screen 08).

I have a habit: when I paint human skins or animal skins without hair I use always the same tones or a not much realistic chromatic scale and when I finish it, I appeal to variations for modify the tones, as we will see forward. This is the reason of the tones in the first steps of the process, different than the final result.

STEP 5

The next step was to paint the different layers for the body and the rest of elements (Screen 09).

Locking the oppacity of each layer, I paint over there the details and volumes. For a better contrast reference, I decided to paint the background before to continue with the figures, using for that some texture brushes from my collection: some clouds and fog (Screen 10).

STEP 6

For to paint the skin of the body, I should to imitate the texture and tones of the hippopotamus but with the volumes and light of the human model. I drawed bigger than real the mass muscle and the veins under the skin (Screen 11, Screen 12).

STEP 7

In this moment, I decided to change the girl and I started to paint her in a different document as independent group of layers (Screen 13).

The warm skin tones will determine the future tones in all the scene. The light on shoulder are simply touches of pure white (Screen 14).

For to paint the hair –blonde hairs are always a nightmare…- I used thin brushes, like 3 pixels and similar (Screen 15).

The tattoo was originally very sharp and I´d apply a blur filter (Screen 16), the same in the arm of the monster.

When the girl was finished (Screen 17), I put her into the main picture as independent group and scaled it.

STEP 8

Now is the moment of the variations for to compensate the tones in all the elements, taking as reference the skin of the girl (Screen 18).

Finally, I work in the texture and details of the glover, the embroidered and the wood of the stick (Screen 19).

With some more fine touches and my sign, the painting is finished.