Legend vs aliens

Film lover Kevin McGivern celebrates Alien’s 40th anniversary by painting Ripley as she’s about to turn the heat up on the xenomorph…

For me, Ellen Ripley is an unsurpassed female icon of film. Kevin McGivern created a fantastic homage.

I’ve been a subscriber to ImagineFX for many years, so being asked to illustrate the cover was a great thrill for me. Films are a huge inspiration for my work, so when I found out that the brief was to paint Ellen Ripley from Alien, I was over the moon!

In this workshop, I’ll go through my entire process, documenting every step of the way, answering many of the questions that have been asked in the past about my workflow. I’ll take you through the stages of laying down the initial sketches, to creating a tight drawing, making colour roughs, my painting process and those finishing touches.

I’ve found throughout my career that the more organised I am at every stage, the better the piece turns out in the end. At this point, I’ve developed a pretty solid painting process, which I’ve found is important to give your work a consistent look and feel.

The first thing for me to do is to re-watch the Alien films. It’s important for me to do this because I want to gain a sense of Ripley’s character, and the feel and mood of the first film – which is 40 years old! It also gives me the chance to look for subtleties in the character that I may have missed when just watching the film purely for enjoyment.

1 Create a handful of initial sketches

The brief from the ImagineFX team was quite straightforward. I had to illustrate the “iconic Ellen Ripley from the first Alien film” with the background of the USCSS Nostromo’s interior having a loosely sketched or hand-drawn look to it, so not as to overpower the cover. The drawing may be my favourite part of the process so I allowed myself to have some fun with some different poses for Ripley. The main criteria I gave myself was that she had to look iconic and strong.

2 Create a mood board

I send the five sketches off to the team and they choose the sketch with Ripley holding the gun over her shoulder. At this point, I gather my references and create my mood board. I shoot my own references, take screencaps from the movie and find any images that have the “feel” of what I’m going for in the final image. PureRef is a great program for organising reference images.

3 Nail down the drawing

I really enjoy this stage and take my time to get the drawing nailed down as much as possible. I create a tight drawing and suggest lighting based on my reference photography and mood board. I often find with beginner artists, they don’t spend long enough at the early planning stages of a piece, and the final piece suffers in the end. (Something that took me a while to learn too!)

4 Choose your colour palette

The ImagineFX team was quite specific with the look that it wanted from its film art special cover, but I wanted to give them another colour option, just in case. I come up with pleasing colour palettes to create one version of Ripley against a white background, and another featuring a dark blue background, and adjust the lighting appropriately. The white background was chosen, so I get to work on the painting.

5 Defining the light and shadows

I always start the painting process with the face. Faces immediately attract the attention of the viewer so I know that if I get the face to a point I’m happy with, I can relax for the rest of the painting. At this stage, I’m not overly concerned with colour – I just want to define the areas of light and shadow.

6 Don’t scrimp on the hands!

After the face, the viewer will notice any faults in the hands right away. It’s not unusual for me to spend 50 per cent of my time on the head and hands. Again, I’m not worried about any subtle colour changes in the hands just yet, I’m only interested in getting the light and shadow down.

7 Work on the clothing and gun

I then get to work painting the clothing and flamethrower. At this stage, I make some changes to the perspective of the flamethrower and position of the character’s head. One of the things I love about working digitally is how easy these changes are to make.

8 Developing the texture on the flamethrower

I wanted to give the flamethrower a feel of being used, and not be brand new. I created a Soft Light layer and glaze in some colour variations to give the metal a more rusted and worn appearance. It’s important to go into this stage gradually. As with many Photoshop layer modes, if you’re too heavy handed then it’s easy to completely ruin the effect that you’re going for.

9 Making a second pass on the figure

Now that the full figure is blocked in, I go back to the face and start hue variations in the skin. I add some pink around the cheeks and nose, redden the lips and make the eyes a saturated light brown. For this, I use a combination of Color layers and painting opaquely on a Normal layer.

10 Re-establish the line drawing

The drawing is an important part of my process and I want the viewer to see that in the final image. I go over the entire figure, re-establishing the lines of the drawing. Once this is done, I lock the Transparency of this layer, and colour the lines to fit with the painting.

11 Introduce a secondary light source

I want to give the figure a greater sense of form and interest, so I add a secondary light source on the figure. This also enables me to introduce another colour to the image, which I feel it needs.

12 Draw in the background

The brief calls for a sketched/hand-drawn background, so it’s time to recreate one of the corridors from the Nostromo. I want to take advantage of leading lines, which will help to direct the viewer’s attention back to Ripley.

If I need to adjust my values I’ll use the Blend If option in the Layer Style panel. If I want to lift the highlights slightly, I’ll fill a layer with white or a light colour, double-click that layer, and then use the sliders to ensure this layer only affects the lighter values underneath.

13 Making final adjustments

At this stage, the bulk of the painting is pretty much complete. Often as a finishing touch, I’ll create a Solid Colour layer on top and set it to Soft Light. I choose a suitable colour and reduce the Opacity to between seven and 15 per cent. This brings a sense of unity to the image.

I’m often asked how I achieve a painterly look with my digital art. My answer is I paint as I would traditionally. I create an underdrawing, distinguish light and shadow, then glaze/paint in colours.

Another key aspect of my work is that I’ve created brushes that aren’t easy to use. That sense of struggle ensures I concentrate on every brush stroke. I also leave in and even deliberately create “happy accidents”. It’s so easy with digital work to correct everything. I prefer to leave these happy accidents alone so that the viewer knows this image was created by hand.