Hello Steemians !

Here is my participation for the Trial by Comics Contest held by @kommienezuspadt.

I might say... It can be a bit off topic but I wanted to find another way to look at the Stranger Things theme and world by imagining a new character from Hawkin's lab (I blurred here number haha...)

So I present you the Dream Maker !

A Little Story

The girl knew how to make people sleep. By taking control over their dreams she could travel to the upside down and bring her victim with her. Once her powers grew sufficiently she escaped the laboratory. After a few years of wandering she finally found one of those hippie communities who gave her shelter and food. As time passed, she learned to develop her skills further to help people. As she became known as the Dream Maker.

Early Stage

This time, I didn't follow my usual processes and let my mind flow instead. I was only focusing on my goal (define how far on color variations I can go) and this story of that girl hiding in a hippie community who ended up being the shaman (and maybe starting the New Age movement haha) So I came up with this sketch (after a few thumbnailing and sketching) :

Painting

After what I just painted it. To be honest I was totally absorbed by the painting so I had a hard time keeping the process straight.

I went full colors from the beginning, starting with a color gradient (orange to red values) to give me a sense of mood. On which I added the base colors from the hairs and the pants. I began painting quite freely from that point but always from general to detail. It means I go from the base colors of the whole image, and the further I am within the process, the more in-detail I go.

Still really important, keeping an eye on values. Especially as I go straight with colors, it is easy to get carried away and forget about value accuracy.

Color Variations

Once I felt ok with the painting I took a step back and though I thought the colors were alright at this point I still added a Hue Variation layer in order to check it out. This little tip is very useful as it proves me wrong often. There is always a few variations which can help the composition.
I ended up finishing the painting with this Hue layer, trying to find the right mood and color combinations, trying out what was working and what wasn't (though I still have a long way to go here).

Final Effects

For the last touches, correcting the colors with the Curves and the values with the Level adjustment layer, some high pass and blur and it is ready to go !