Time Mage Hadley4

Hello again!

In my last post I said that I was doing something that I wanted to take my time on, and here it is! although I still feel that there are many more things to do, but I've been working on this for more than 8 days and I was going to go crazy if I kept looking for flaws in every pixel. 😅

But I managed to stay sane, and I present to you the Time Mage, a card that I think is in the top of the characters that have been made more fan arts for the @Splinterlands weekly contest, seriously I have seen many artworks of her and I also wanted to join this list because I love the character design with her big skirt, the white armor, her short hair and her indecipherable pink eyes. I take my hat off to whoever designed this character, and below I leave you the process of my fan art, enjoy it!

Tools:

Gaomon S620
Photoshop
Brushes courtesy of Imad Awan: Download here

🔰Process🔰

_Reference

-Step 1:

As usual I start with the sketch, and I always like to show you from the first rough sketches to the most elaborate outline, because it is not all about getting it perfect at the first time, but about patience and constancy, although of course I dream of making my sketches beautiful at the first time.

-Step 2:

I thought that this illustration would be something fast and that maybe I would do it in two days at most (dreaming is free) so I didn't work in grayscale but I took directly the color palette used in the original Splinterlands card, but separating each element in an individual layer, so I could work orderly and make everything less complicated, this way I could detail the skirt without worrying if the armor area would be affected by a loose brushstroke.

-Step 3:

But if something was clear to me since I made the first line sketch, is that there would be a few shines that would make the clothes and the armor look great, so I was experimenting with some shiny tones in the skirt, plus a full lighting to the legs, and I was about to do something that one of my favorite artists (Serafleur) does, she lights the inside of her girls hair, making their faces stand out even more, but I didn't do it because I didn't want to abuse the shines so early.

-Step 4:

What I did do, was to mix all the layers of the body of the Time Mage, duplicate it 3 times and then to each copy I modified the RGB channels, or better said, I separated them, so one layer was red, another green and the third blue, I moved their positions slightly and this way I obtained new colors that can be appreciated in the border of the skirt.

-Step 5:

As I saw that the artwork was missing a greater visual impact, I added a layer in the "hard light" fusion mode and with it I got more contrast, just the one I needed to start working the clock and of course the magic that is generated through it.

Here was where I had to make an important decision, which was - "Do I make many shines within the magic or do I stay reasonable and do not make everything blindingly bright?"- and I decided for this last one, since I had the background done and this one was already very bright and it was highlighting the character, but if I made many new shines no one would stop to see the face of the Time Mage🤔, so tell me in the comments, Do you think I should have made more shiny particles just like in the original design or so is the final piece okay?