Art – Guardian

Notes: this drawing was a birthday/Valentine’s day gift for Mike.  It is Prismacolor markers and black pen done on posterboard from Office Max. (read this next part carefully) This is not original art.  I am not claiming that it is original art.  It is a redo of a picture found in The Book of Angels, a collaboration of angelic lore by several artists.  I am not making any monetary profit off of this art, nor was it an art trade.  It was a gift.  The only thing I received in return was the satisfaction of knowing he was pleased.  If you steal art from this page, you will be sued, not me.

Guardian: Step-by-step

Guardian - Workspace
First, I set up my workspace.  This is (was) on my desk in my room.  As you can see, I had the original art; a smaller test drawing in my sketchbook; lighting; and pencils.  At the moment, this was all I needed.  Note: I eventually did a good bit of work at the kitchen table because Science Fair experiments were running on my desk.

1 – Rough sketch
Okay, this is a little rough, but you get the general idea.  Here I was just laying out composition and large blocked shapes to get an idea of sizing and placement on the board.  This part was all done with a 2H pencil.

2 - More definition
Here I’m just adding a bit more detail – feathers, hands, and some clothing folds.  This part was done with a B pencil, so a little more smudgy.

3 – Extra Detail
Even more definition – clothing and layers of feathers, along with some background development.  As you can see, I added an extra archway in the background for some more interest, since I couldn’t do clouds real well.

 4 – Holy Shading time, Batman!  (Ne? Thumbnails randomly work now.  Go figure.)
Okay, after the last one I stopped taking pictures for quite a while… so there’s a great deal of difference.  A lot of difference.  I inked the statuary and the long folds of cloth that hang off the edge.  As you can see, I also went in and started using Prismacolors.  The set I have is warm grays, and I used black, 80%, 60%, and 40/30% for most of this drawing.  The right wing (angel’s left) I did more in the style of the original drawing.  The other one was done in more of my style, with heavy shadows at the bottom of the feathers fading to light at the top.  I also worked on the shading of the hood and robe and got a nice shiny edge to the sword.

 5 – More Prismacolor work
More work!  I added flesh tones to the angel’s arms and began working on the stone columns.  The flesh tones were done using Light Walnut and Light Tan.  On the columns, I used almost every shade, working from black up to about 30%.

6 - Stonework (baka baka baka…)
Still working on the column and stonework.  I was going for the marbled effect presented in the original picture.  Kinda hard to tell at this point, though.

7 - Finished!
Finished!  I marbled and shaded the left column and the archway in the background.  Successful?  Eh… maybe.  Not bad for a first try, though.  I also took the 10% marker and added the light shining down on the angel.  You can’t really tell, but I also did a thinline inking on some of the folds of clothing.  And that’s it!