Celeno's Design: Mini-Tutorial

FEBRUARY 2018

This month, in the lead-up to the Creatures of Light ​paperback release, I've been producing all kinds of bonus content--including character profiles for a few final main characters. The most significant, of course, is Celeno, Seventh King of Alcoro and sort of the unwitting epicenter of all the messes everybody's sorting through in the series. His character design has remained fairly constant from my early drafts--my mom fan-cast him as Oscar Isaac pretty early on, which has given me a good stable design foundation (as well as a phone gallery full of Poe Dameron screencaps).

For Celeno's official character portrait, I took a video of my Photoshop process, from sketch to finished product. Check it out below the jump:

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There's no voice-over on this video, though there are on a few of my other videos, with tutorial narration on Mae's portrait that includes tips on brushes, textures, etc. The basic process is a loose sketch, followed by more refined line art on a separate layer. I turn off the sketch layer and add a flat color layer under the line art, during which I use the Hue/Saturation tool to set my palette (this helps me keep things from getting too saturated). I merge the line art and color layers and add a Multiply mask, usually in a purple or blue hue, and then erase large sections of highlights. I merge those, and then it's just painting painting painting. I use the color picker to select mid-tones and spend most of the time just smoothing everything out. Add some final Screen highlights, and ta da! A color character portrait.

The neat thing about these character profiles is that I've been doing them now for three years, posting them with each new book release. Because they're all in the same format, it's easy to see the slight shifts in my style from then to now.

The first one I did was Mae, done back in the halcyon days of early 2016 as I was prepping for Woodwalker's release. I was making some breakthroughs with communicating light and shadow, playing around with rim lighting and backlighting, as well as forcing myself to be a little looser with my brush strokes. While they're not super bold, those rough edges were a big step for me, part of my quest to ease up my style and keep the energy in my pieces.

The following year, early 2017, saw Gemma introduced with Ashes to Fire. I think I took the obsession with lighting a little too far in this piece, adding ambient shine pretty much anywhere I could. This was also right at the cusp of my crusade to mature my style, after one too many instances of people assuming my series was middle-grade fiction thanks to the unicorn vomit palettes and candy-eyed cartoons I was posting. Almost all of 2017 was spent muting my colors and maturing my style to something that more closely matched the YA-Adult crossover nature of the books.

Which brings us to Celeno. It's pretty neat to see the jump between Gemma and Celeno here--colors are softer, lighting is more subtle, he's a little less cartoony. Part of that is the more solemn nature of his character over Gemma's, but a lot of it has to do with that intentional refining of my "look."

​I'm probably still always going to work with a pseudo-Disney style, and I still have a long way to go in honing my grasp on color theory and composition. But it's nice to see my pieces taking on a little more "grown-up" feel to them. 

For more on my artistic process and character design throughout this trilogy, take a look at the awesome video produced by my publisher, Harper Voyager. This one does have narration and showcases more progress clips and insights behind the designs for different characters: 

Finally, if you like watching these kinds of progress videos, you should check out the event I'll be doing at the Pelham Road library in Greenville, SC on April 19! I'll be doing a live-drawing demonstration, while talking about my process for character creation. If you're in the area, come check it out! Details on my Events page.

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February Art Roundup

My just-for-fun output was pretty low this month as I was producing all kinds of material for the Creatures of Light ​launch party!

See full portfolio

What I'm Reading

News and Upcoming Events

• Daughter of Fortune, Isabel Allende
• The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, Mackenzie Lee
• Children of Blood and Bone,​ Tomi Adeyemi

Did you get some value out of this post? If so, please consider buying me a coffee by donating $3 to my Ko-fi account:

• Big excitement coming up with the Creatures of Light release party on March 6! The always-awesome Anderson County librarians and I have been working on so much awesome stuff for this party. Food, freebies, coloring pages, prizes, and a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game! Oh, right, and BOOKS! Get all the details on myEvents page. 
• There will be several more regional events for Creatures of Light in the next few months, so keep an eye on my Events page!