PAINT A DYNAMIC CHARACTER

MARCEL MOSQI describes his step-by-step process to painting a vibrant, stylised character in an action pose using Indian ink and watercolours

While using digital media is a brilliant way to create or enhance artwork and simplify the creative process, going 100% traditional is a great exercise and a very interesting experience. For this illustration I’ll work on cold pressed watercolour paper, which I find easier to paint on, produce deeper colours, and add variations to the tints when they’re not dry yet. This tutorial will work with hot pressed paper as well, it’s just not as flexible and won’t allow much in the way of modifications, but will be way easier to ink.

With regards to the inking medium, any waterproof ink or pen can be used, but the Japanese G pen offers a great variety of line variations and is very satisfying to use. There are many ways to draw with it, but it requires some practice and patience. It will disagree with the grain of the paper, but it’s worth the pain – the sharpness of the line it provides is a great way to make any drawing dynamic. A good way around it is to use a fine brush with the Indian ink.

In this tutorial, I’ll go over my key steps for designing and painting a character in an action pose, from the first sketches to the final details. Marcel Mosqi is a freelance illustrator and concept artist specialised in watercolour painting, working in different fields including video games, tabletop RPG and board games. He’s inspired by Japanese animation, manga and Hong Kong action movies. www.artstation.com/mosqi

1 References and sketching

The first step I take is sketching and looking for as many references I can for what I have in mind for the illustration. Sketching at a small size helps me quickly test different compositions and poses for the character. I display photos and illustrations on my computer screen to get more poses and colour ideas.

2 First look

The initial base sketch lays the foundations of the drawing; I use cheap paper to be able to sketch and erase freely. Even if it’s messy, that’s the moment to get the proportions and pose right to make it look dynamic, using foreshortening, movement and flowing details like fabric and hair.

3 Clean sketch

Having a detailed and rather clean sketch is important to avoid mistakes and misinterpretations at the next step. This is the moment when the design of the character needs to be set, to avoid having to think about it or improvise when inking, and be able to focus on the line.

4 Lightbox

Using a lightbox allows me to avoid sketching and erasing on the watercolour paper, which would damage it and make painting and inking much harder. This 300g watercolour paper is thick, so it might require to be in the dark, or having a powerful enough lightbox in order to see through it.

5 Inking

The drawing needs to be inked with water-resistant ink. The cold pressed watercolour paper I use makes it quite hard to control line variations and ink flow with a nib pen, that means going slower than on other types of paper. I draw the details of the background with a pencil.

6 Preparing to paint

Taping the paper to a cutting mat prevents the paper from warping too much because of the water, while letting me turn it around to paint details more easily. Then I think about what colours I’ll use, and before painting the sky I prepare the colours I’ll need on the palette, and use a scrap of paper to test them.

7 Wet on wet

Before painting the background, I lay water on the sky areas to make a gradient and to be able to paint it without risking unwanted colour demarcations. These occur when paint dries a little before coming back to it with the brush, which can give interesting results, but I won’t want them on the sky here.

8 Background first

Painting the background first helps set the atmosphere and colour harmony of the painting. I always start from the farthest, less saturated, to the closest elements. Masking fluid can be used to mask other elements, like the clouds and the character, but I often find painting around quicker.

9 Wet on dry

When starting to paint the character, I like to begin with the skin; I adapt the other colours to it and not the opposite. I never wet the paper with water for small areas but directly use paint, and try to add touches of red or pink to the ears and fingers while the paint is still wet.

10 Painting shadows

When I have laid the base colour for the skin and the paint is dry enough, I paint the shadows with warm or cold colour variations, and try to have smooth gradients to avoid unwanted colour demarcations that would be very visible on a face. This can occur when having too much or not enough water on the brush.

11 Close colours

Next, I paint the other areas that have close colours while these are on my palette, like the hair and shoes, to save time. I use specific colours for the shadows of each area, adding variations to the base colour. While an area’s base colour is drying, I go and paint another before coming back for the shadows.

12 Removing paint

Here I thought the shadow on the arm was way too dark and attracted too much attention. While it’s not easy, you can wash an area with a brush loaded with water, and then apply tissue on it to remove some paint. This paper allows it more than others.

13 Different methods

The arm’s colour is now lighter, but the paper is a bit damaged and the colour might look a bit different – this can be used for creating certain texture effects in other circumstances. I’d rather paint in one or two washes each area, in order to have ‘clean’ and vibrant flats, but it’s possible to paint by fine layers of colour.

14 Painting shadows on white

While it can be done way earlier in the process, I usually paint shadows that are on white areas at the end. They’re the easiest areas to add colour variations, as they won’t have hazardous interactions with an underlying colour, and provide much more control on the tint.

15 Final details

The last step consists of painting the smaller details like the lips, the shadow on the necklace, and darkening a few shadows. My way of using watercolours aims to produce vibrant and dynamic illustrations, but there are multiple ways of using them and a wide variety of possibilities that can be explored to create unique styles and artworks.