Suilad my darlings!

Yes, I have done it again... I have taken part in a contest.... and I even had the dedication not to forget that I registered for it and I even managed to finish the picture.

>>very much proud of self<<

so yeah... before I really get started with everything I just quickly wanna apologize if my wording might be a bit funny or if my sentences don't make sense. I'm pretty darn ill whilst writing this and just gathered up the energy to crawl out of bed for an hour or two, before cuddling up again with tea and calm music, so bear with me ^-^"

Oh, and I wanna share a song in every chapter from now on, since I listen to music nonstop and I think it can push the vibe of the piece quite a bit, ya know?
Anyways, so I kinda rediscovered SWARM whilst drawing this dude, so I guess I'd throw this one in here:

https://youtu.be/n2Yz-eXw7y4

Okie dokie.

I said this was for a contest. So who's contest was it? The one from chilicy!
... you know... since that kinda seems to be the only contest I really get around to draw pictures for.... dang I really need to learn how to work with deadlines...
What was the topic?
>>throws confetti in the air<<

𝓟𝓞𝓡𝓣𝓡𝓐𝓘𝓣

... so I couldn't say "no" to that, since portraits is literally the only thing I really ever draw... i really should get around to drawing different stuff... but I had a blast drawing yet another one nonetheless, so be prepared for another head of mine >w<"

>>smashes sketch in your face<<

So... I wanted to try something different for this one and try to go less stylised and more realistic, similar how I did with this dude here, back in June:

You see, because people have been nagging me to draw more like I did with him and I kinda fancied trying a lineless piece again, so.... yeah. That's what I did.

After doodling down the sketch I blocked out the ruff colours I wanted to use. My main focus, was to transfer a mood with the colours, so I planned on using mostly greys within the character and then make the background metallic. Since I haven't decided what kind of metal I wanted to use  (primarily eyeing gold or bronze), I decided to just colour in the ruff elements, so I could clipp a metal texture on top later on.

After that, I continued by throwing some shade in there. Well.... not the shadow-sort of shade more the colour shade. Where all the blues, reds and greens should go, ya know?

In retrospektive I probably could've pushed this stepp way further, since I later on struggled a lot with the skin looking more dead than I wanted too and there being by far not enough reds in there. But I rarely ever colour like this, so it was obvious that I'd make quite some mistakes ^-^"

After that I went on and started to roughly shade in our dude. My primary goal at that point was to make him look tired, expressionless and dead... which I think I managed quite okay ^-^

Well... I kinda finished the first batch of shading and decided to throw a second layer of shadows on top, together with some faint light. I also decided that making his eyes glow, would look hella cool, so I just... made them glow... cuz that's what I do....

I then went ahead and changed his hair up a bit, since we have been missing contrast, and I threw some more light on him. Not a lot that happened here really ^-^"

I then was essentially done with the drawing below the sketch. The next step would be the rendering and so on, but before I could start, I had to at least decide for a metal in the background.

Since I couldn't decide, I asked the fluffy energy-liger and she replied, that bronze would look better than gold, so I went with that ^-^
After downloading and smashing a ton of textures in there, I was staring at this beauty in front of me (also blocked in his earrings uwu):

So I now could finally start with the proper work. And since I like drawing noses I started with that! Nah... I'm just joking. Noses are a pain to draw. So I started with that, since it'd be the first layer on top and I could always start new without loosing anything, if I should muck it up >w<"

So after fighting through the nose-struggle I also managed to draw the left cheek, before exporting the WIP.

i worked myself around the face a bit (also fixing that right cheekbone of his) and then I asked myself, if that nose doesn't look hella weird. So I looked at my inspo and references and realised, that the nose is indeed hella weird.

So I gave him a nice and bulky potato-nose ^-^

And after I fixed that nose, I started to work on the eyes (or rather eye.... I kinda only did the left one...). I thought that giving him bronze-ish eyes would look cool, so I added an iris in. And since the iris looked so cool, I threw some red rim-lighting in there, since I failed to make the eye glow the way I wanted to and couldn't really erase things without ruining my work below ^-^"

... so it looks pretty okay, doesn't it? Well I realised, that I wasn't feeling the pic at all. I thought that it may be because of the strong contrast between the background ant the character, so I got out the good old krita manual and read up on colour curves.
I experimented a bit and then kinda ended up with this (oh... and I worked a bit on his face and finally gave the dude proper eyebrows):

Still wasn't feeling it, so I opened up a new Krita document and worked on the background, because "Maybe I was just looking at the drawing for too long"

... I had fun, okay?

..... and I would've loved to have thrown just the background in here, but watty is mean and I already reached the 20 pics per chapter limit QwQ

Let's just continue then. Well I threw the background in there and realised, that my colour adjustments didn't quite cut it. So I did another batch and had this now in front of me:

I then let him lie around for a couple of days and drew some other stuff, since I wasn't motivated at all.
Well, and then I thought to myself, that I desperately want this drawing to be finished. Not because I like it a lot, but because I wanted to try out something new. And as Trent always says, you should always finish a drawing, even if you don't like it. Because most artists fail, through never finishing anything.

(Just a little thing on the side... Trent Kaniuga is an amazing artist and wordbuilder, who's been in the art industry for .... i think it was 27 years. He's been a character design and concept artist for a lot of stuff, such as Fortnite, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Overwatch and whatnot... he posts regularily on his YouTube and has a ton of advice, regarding the art industry and how to overall improve as an artist, so if you're into that kinda stuff, I can most certainly recommend him ^-^)

So I sat down, took that stylus in my hand.... and then probably had to go charge it, because I don't have one of those battery-free ones and keep forget to charge it overnight... but as soon as that thing had some juice again, I went and continued.
I knew, that if I wanted to finish the piece and be happy with it, stuff had to change. So I started by picking up that glowing eye idea I had at the beginning and blew it up. Make the glow more dramatic and the focal point of the piece, you know?

I also thought, that our character didn't look the way I wanted too. He looked bored, tired of life, old and undead nearly. And whilst that was the vibe I was kinda going for, it didn't sit well with me now. So combat that a bit, I didn't only change the eyes a ton, i also tried to make his face a bit more youthfull, through softening the jaw and roundging out the cheeks a bit.

So we then had that. And whilst it definetely wasn't quite what I wanted yet, I knew that I was certainly going in the right direction.
And whilst I was thinking what I could change, I decided to finally sort out that hair. Because that sidecut wasn't suiting him. In like, at all.

So he got a haircut ^-^

And after I did the hair, I realised, that making the scar-thingies white asvwell distracted too much from... everything. It looked cramped. So I made them black again ^-^"

And then I looked at his face and realised, that it looked a bit bland. So I messed it up a bit with blood and some freckles (because I always have freckles in my pictures >w<)... oh, and I gave him a bit of a stubble.

So yeah. I was really fealing the piece, so I forged on, finally sorting out the other half of the nose, the ear and rendering his earrings.

And together with all that, I threw some more rimlighting in there. Because you can never have enough of that.

So I was thinking "Cool! As good as done with this one... looking great so far!" Until I realised, that I totally neglected the body, since I started to render.

Riddles with guilt I started to figure out male anatomy again and worked along on the torso.

And that was it with the work in progresses.

In the end, I added some texture to the hair (since it'd be really uncool, if I'd just leave it a coloured blob after working so hard on everything else), I also finished up the torso though giving him some chest hair, fixing up the mess that was his neck and adding some freckles, and then added final thouches, such as sub-surface-scattering, some bronze blurs across the skin, overall lighting improvement and textures through overlays, more rimlighting (cuz there's never enough of that), some lense flares in the eyes (but just faintly, so you can see that they are there, but without realising that they are there... dang that sentence made no sense whatsoever).

>>carefully places final piece in front of you<<

And here's a closeup of that face, since it took me forever and I'm proud of it and watty has the tendency to ruin the quality of pictures.

Wowie.... so that's all from me for today. I hope you like it chilicy and I hope everyone else reading through this likes it too.

I can't really think of the stuff I usually say at the end of chapters and I probably should go back to bed and try and sleep a bit, so I'll just wave you goodbye and say: