Despite the scary mechanical claw I wanted a feeling of sexy playfulness so I created something that has the shape of a girl wearing over sized pajamas. So starting with a rough pose I draw the overall shape of the suit, this was done on a cintiq in photoshop CS. I'm using oversized space boots and an umbilical line that harkens to a jet refueling pump to give it that aerospace flair. I'm creating areas of quiet such as the sleeves in order to empasize the details in the mechanical parts. After the rough shape is done I printed the image in reverse and drew on the reverse side of the paper in pencil unlike the head which was all pencil.

P.S. Dont worry I will draw the claw in the far hand.

finishing touches

Someone asked about the hair so here it is. I often paint hair in blocks and think of it as a mass rather than trying to render out individual strands, again the flat brush is great fun here. I'm still learning this stuff as well so nothing I say here is gospel. Look at the work of Loomis and the advertising artists of the 1950's and see how they solved this. I made the right side of her face brighter and more rendered to make it look more three dimensional. I also did it to get rid of the five o'clock shadow that was happening on the painting :p

head demo

Work has had me horribly busy, sorry for the long absence. Here's a short tutorial on the basics of how I paint the face of the lovely Jeanet. I generally draw with a pencil and scan it in. I mess with the brightness and contrast till the drawing is fairly clean and then in Photoshop I turn the drawing into a multiply layer. Underneath the multiply layer I create another layer to paint on. I usually use a flat brush so I can chisel out the planes of the face. My brush is set so that opacity is set to pen pressure.

Note how features are a little stylized and become design elements, you should check out the work of Gil Elvgren and J.C. Leyendecker who are masters at this.

now on a concept this is pretty much done but if this were an illustration I would render this more, using this as an under painting and obliterating most of the lines.

Cheers and much thanks to Jeanet and the impatient Saskia.

Next time, costume design or turning Jeanet into a spacegirl!