BLOODSDREAM: Isle of Sweet Airs

Characters are getting developed, backstories are coming together, and a realistic world with just a few fantastical qualities is being built. It’s been a long couple months, but yours truly (Helen) is back at it again with a rework of BLOODSDREAM! Check out the painting process of my first panel below!

Blocking – I wanted to put a lot more focus on the art, so I went online and found different photos of beaches to take layout and color inspiration from! I settled on a sunset vibe, and because the prologue of this comic is set in the Mediterranean, I made sure to add some rocky cliffs.

Clouds – Traditional line art combined with cell shading (fill-in-the-shape coloring) would’ve been difficult to work with since I wanted to portray a fluffy, layered feeling for the clouds, so I looked up some cloud tutorials online to find a suitable brush! I ended up settling on the “Fluffy Watercolor 3” brush in the Medicang Paint app.

Cloud details and horizon – I shrunk the size of the fluffy brush to spice up the painting with some vibrant detailing, and used a simple watercolor brush to create different colors on the horizon. After that, I blended them with the blur tool.

Cliffs – This was pretty straightforward because of how dark the colors were. I carved out a jagged silhouette, and with a fluffy green-tinted brush, indicated light and dimension.

Ocean – This took awhile! I used the sharp pen brush, which fades out on both ends, and spent about half an hour drawing curves to represent the motion of the water. To speed up the process a little, I selected parts of the waves to copy and paste to other parts of the painting, transforming them as necessary so they didnt look formulaic.

Beach – My favorite part! I created a new layer and blocked out the general direction of the reflection. I then proceeded to smudge out the edges, protect alpha (lock the shape of the canvas), and add colors to represent the reflection of the sky.

I hope that was informative and got you excited for the comic! I’m ecstatic to be able to put my new techniques (and protagonists) to the test.