Creating the Illustration

In this post I will go through my process of how I created my illustration, with multiple screenshots showing each stage. 

I wanted to show a whale oil extraction taking place in an unhygienic room, my thought process was that although whale oil is distributed on mass, I thought there must be some unofficial suppliers who try to profit from it. I thought of a room with blood and whale oil on the floor, suppliers that do not follow any sort of regulations.

Initial sketching and line-work

I started with some general boxes in perspective to understand what the room would look like and what I would include.

I then started to sketch out the contents of the room, the whale being hoisted onto the ceiling and various furnishings in the room. Blood covering the floor.

Next I created cleaner line-work for the core elements of the illustration. I wanted the viewer to understand something is being harvested from the whale, even if they are unfamiliar with the Dishonored franchise.

Shading and colouring

I wanted to try Marc Brunet’s technique of creating a detail/shading layer, then applying multiply onto the colour layer. So I detailed the whale first to try out this technique, this was my first time painting with this workflow.

I then did the same for the hoists, spear and whale oil container.

I then added a layer of colour to the whale, I wanted to try to stick largely to a monochromatic colour scheme, remaining in a blue hue and working within it, but to grab the viewers attention I added a hint of red along the gums.

I then coloured the other elements of the room mentioned earlier.

For the background I tried to make sure the ceiling, wall and floor each had different textures to differentiate them.

Next I added the colour layer to finalise the background, again remaining within that blue hue.

To finalise the colouring stage, I added blood dripping down the whale from the spear, along with a pool of blood on the floor. I also added some of the whale oil onto the floor.

The finished piece

Finishing up, I created a copy of the original file (in case I ever need to go back and change anything) and began to work on general clean-up and merging the layers. The below image is the finished piece:

Conclusion

Creating this piece was a really interesting process for me. It was my first time using an iPad and Procreate to create digital art which was a challenge, it was also a new workflow for me following Marc Brunet’s way of working. While it was a challenge, I feel like the workflow was really effective, though I definitely could do a better job at perfecting the process as I still did a lot of things that added time unnecessarily. 

I tried to show the viewer of the piece enough to give them a glimpse into the world, showing that within this world whales are used for some purpose, but not telling the viewer what they are used for. I wanted to create some initial intrigue and build part of the world in the mind of the viewer without them having an understanding of Dishonored.

I definitely want to explore more on colour theory and how colour can be used to help guide the viewer and immerse them in a piece. I definitely would like to practice with different colour schemes as well.

While this was primarily an experimental piece, I wish I spent more time filling out the room to make it more interesting. I think it would have made the painting feel more complete.