The Wanderer
Posted on January 14, 2009
This is a character concept piece that I’ve been working on and off in my spare time for around five weeks now. Having been quite intensively involved in a number of realistic/scientific projects recently, it was great to switch off and get back to what I love doing, painting characters!
All together it took about 15 hours, painted entirely in Photoshop CS2. Primarily it’s using the default brushes, but I also made some custom skin brushes for pores, wrinkles and any repetitive skin features. I’ve posted a few work in progress images below so you can see how it progressed. I actually saved my canvas every hour or so, so I will try to make an animated gif of the process- but that’ll be another update.
This was the initial stage after about 30 minutes, just getting a feel for how I wanted the strange creature to look- in the case of the wanderer, almost entirely humanoid with a twist on a couple of features.
Just tightening up his features at this stage, I decide early on that I want the eyes to be the focus.
At this stage I block in the background and tighten up some details. I notice some issues with the hair and bone structure that need to be addressed.
Getting pretty close to the end product. I add an ear and repaint the hair to fit his skull a little tighter. From this point onwards it was really just tightening details up and trying not to overdo areas that didn’t really need it. I toyed with the idea of blue eyes, but it seemed to kill any empathy with the character.
You can find a higher resolution version here.
Thanks, any comments appreciated.
Looks like this guy has a few stories to tell – good mixture of alien / sentient figure. Really like your work – keep it up.
I’m a fan of your work too. He certainly looks well-travelled!
another fine piece of work !, at first glimpse i really thought it had been sculpted in Zbrush or mudbox
Great image! Such a photographic quality.
Thanks a lot for the comments
This guy has a lot of history, captured perfectly
Did you have Mick Jagger in mind while drawing this? :p
Not really! It kind of dawned on me as I started to detail him.
Lord Voldemort meets Mick Jagger!
Nice one!
looks wicked looks a bit like Voldemort!