Adventures In Photoshop 2: Revenge of the Linework

In College, we've been asked to create pictures for a thing called the Lookbook, a book filled with examples from the students work, as well as a profile written by the students themselves. One of these images is the profile image, created in A3, but meant to be sized down to a tiny image. We created them in A3 so that we could later print them out full size and use them as portfolio work.

I may have gone slightly overboard on it, I created four.

This is the first one I completed. It was part of a full character, but I decided that the arm holding the axe would look cool as it's own image. I outlined the pen drawing in Adobe Illustrator, as I did for each of the following pictures, but this one is distinct for the fact that I selected a different style of line, one which looked like pencil lines. I decided, upon selecting that line style, that I wanted this piece to look hand drawn, as if it had been illustrated in a book. Hence using a texture of old paper, and letting myself miss spots when colouring.

This one I decided to give a somewhat pop-art like look, with flat colours and invisible linework over a gradient background. I'm somewhat annoyed that her rope vanishes into the background at points, but I feel it would likely draw too much attention to it. I'm especially proud of her right hand, and how it looks lined.

This one is more traditionally coloured and shaded, but it also has invisible linework. The character featured is the character I play in Dungeons and Dragons, whose name is Bree Cedarfoot. I chose to make Bree's linework invisible, as it gave the image of her an airier appearance, which I felt suited Bree as a character better. Bree is something which, in Dungeons and Dragons, is called a Halfling. However, Halflings in Dungeons and Dragons are inspired by Tolkien's Hobbits. In turn, Bree's outfit in this image takes heavy inspiration from Bilbo Baggins' outfit in The Hobbit movies.

This was the final image I completed, as well as the one which I chose as my profile image for the Lookbook. Similar to the first drawing, I wanted to lend this one a hand drawn appearance, through missing spots while colouring it. However, where before I wanted it to look like an illustration in an old book, this one I wanted to look childlike and innocent, like how I imagined the bag to be. I gave it a simple striped background, with warm brown colours to accent the bag itself. I wanted the bag to be visible, but not to pop too much.