Soldier Girl Art

Code name: Soldier Girl, my 3rd NFT artwork.

Hello guys, I'm back and I brought Soldier Girl with me this time. I named her that because the name was inspired after watching season three of 'The Boys' web series which was aired recently on Amazon Prime. They introduced a new character called Soldier boy in it and he is played by one of my favourite actors Jensen Ackles. He is the same actor who played Dean in the Supernatural web series. So I thought it would be a fine choice to name my OC after him.

So the idea was to create an OC in military gear holding a gun. Took me a while to find a decent reference image from Pinterest this time. I almost gave up looking for it and even thought about changing the Military theme. Last night I was randomly scrolling through the app and there it was, the picture I was looking for all this time. I didn't feel sleepy at all so I started working on the rough sketch last night itself and finished drawing a decent sketch at 3 am I think. Yeah, I'm a night owl haha.

When you are working on something you really like time flies. It doesn't feel like work at all and the urge to complete the painting is very high. It almost feels like you get a kick from seeing the finished version of your work. Then you get to stare at it for a long time to check for any mistakes and refine it to make an improved version. The joy of seeing your finished work after hours of hard work is truly amazing. The fruit of your labour I suppose. Anyway, enjoy the process below.

The process

I made this rough sketch in my notebook with 2B pencil. As you can see in the rough sketch the initial idea was to add a visor on her face to make her look like an advanced soldier but later on, I figured it's best to reveal the eyes because eyes are the soul of painting. The painting looked dead without it so I added it after painting the other areas.

I always start with the body because it only covers less area so I paint it first and based on the skin tone I pick the hair colour.

About the background colour, I used to paint keeping the background white but recently found out from a tutorial that using a low saturation background is best while painting. I don't know the science behind it but my eyes feel a lot better when I do that.

As you can see I finished painting the base colour and added some red here and there to match the logo theme. The red and black combo worked and I think it looks cool, especially on the gun.

It's time to make it pop by adding the shades. I started adding shades to her body, visor and gun. The source of light is from the right so shades are painted in respect to that direction.

Next up was to shade the parts which mattered the most which are the vest, dress and hair. I added shades to her hair and vest with a dip pen hard brush and airbrush. The airbrush is best to create a nice gradient effect. The Mascot logo was painted flat because it's a tattoo on her hand so not much detail is needed in that area. Note that I removed the visor and added eyes and earphones instead. This change, in my opinion improved the overall vibe of the painting. Since they were added I had to go to the skin layer and added the new shadow formation on her face. I also added shadows on her eyes while I was at it.

Finally, highlights were added to her hair, vest and eyes using a dip pen and Airbrush. I increased the darkness of the background a bit duplicated the painting and put it in overlay mode on the dark background. I used this same method to create my Ava OC background. It just works!

Reference image source: https://pin.it/7nYNuxw

Apps used: Ibis paint x

Duration: 8 hrs

Thank you so much for reading