Heart Wrench: BREAKDOWN!

Time for another breakdown, kids.

Tis time for the latest pic to go up on my dA. Originally made to be a print for the Comiccon coming up in November (c4 comic con here on Winnipeg) but we'll see how that goes as I make new pieces in the coming days.

So here we go:

First I laid down some crazy pencils and then I started to ink the one spot I knew had to be black.... and also would be the most intricate.

















                                                                                         Done!

I know that I want the heart to be red and the reddish (pinkish?) glow to show through the cracks, so that's where I go next. I also do this because I want this colour to stand out and I fear if I do an overall wash first on the body colour then it'll taint the red spots.
Of course I do the bowtie on GRDR at the same time.

What else do I know? The wires are different colours in my head but as soon as I lay down the yellow I can imagine the wires glowing. Even as I lay down the blue and green one i'm thinking that I may re-colour them in Photoshop later.

As the wires cross GRDR's chest I realize that I didn't fill in his awesome waistcoat so I do it now.

Now I feel like the piece needs unity. I contemplate doing a wash over the whole piece but instead I settle on doing some shadows to give the whole piece weight. From now on whatever I do will feel less abstract and more like the finishing up of a piece.

I realize i'm thinking that I want both the background and the robot to be orangeish so I opt for a more "flesh tone" type colour, mixing in some orange and darkening it a bit so it's more like a kind of brown.

As I do this I start to feel like the shadows aren't doing a good enough job of making the piece stand out so I go over some shadows, make them darker and use that to make certain elements and details stand up. It's important to do that in a piece like this without any outlines.
Along those same lines I start to add some shadows to GRDR (the white robot, if you didn't know by now) to make him stand out as well.

The ground that they're on needs some colour now too. I have to make sure that the brown is darker than the robot's armour. Once that's done, i'll have to go back over the shadows like I did with the robot's body to give the earth some more weight and make it's details stand out.

I don't know why I like the "gradient" in the background but I choose not to do a flat orange. It gives it more of a sun-setting feeling. At this point I realize it's time to tighten up the shadows on GRDR because he's just about the only thing not standing out. Once I get some really dark shadow work on there I'm done... almost.

I add the glowing effects in Photoshop and voila... finished piece. Hope you all enjoy it.

  I may be selling prints of it at the con this year if it makes the final cut. Even if it doesn't though... prints can be requested from my site.