Hehyo kids!

So I'm back again with another contest drawing! This time it was for teewurscht /  felycitaz (wasn't sure what acc to tagg, sry QwQ) and the topic "magic and witchcraft"

As soon as I read the promt I had a gazillion ideas on how to interpret it, my first main idea was more in the direction of astrology and tarot cards, the next one was more an epic wizard idea, but in the end I decided on a really weird concept I had...

Essentially we had the main figure standing in the centre, eyes sown shut and another eye on their forehead. Glowing streams of just white flowing out of the forehead-eye and the mouth (since I wanna try experimenting with negatice space a bit more uwu)
Then we'd have several hands grabbing after them, touching them, and also some fancy glowing rune-tattoos...

I have no clue how that popped up, but I was playing with a more abstract representation of posession, sacrifice or rituals.

WELL then it only came to drawing it, starting off with this rough sketch:

I found a pretty darn nice pose on pinterest, which I intended to reference mostly for the hands:

[pic is from fashionpost.jp and is a portrait of yosuke kubozuka]

Then it came to the lighting, and quite some ideas changed at this point. I decided to leave the whole "sown shut eye and extra eye on forehead" thing away, since I just overdid the concept. I barely do it nowadays but... not to eager to go back to that phase of mine >w<"

So now its just wide open eyes. I also decided to change the pose, making it feel a bit awkward and unbalanced, as though he were kinda falling backwards, yet is balanced out by those light streams. Goal was to get an uneasy feel to it all, whilst also not looking instantly unbalanced.

I did intend to give the poor lad some ritualistic clothing, but I ended up liking him more or less naked better? So... yeah....

I didn't do the other hands and the background yet, since I wanted to focus on the character at this point >w<
Composition-wise everything was a bit challenging. Through the white lines going down the eye would be lead out of the canvas, and through the singular figure and the rather scattered hands I had in mind later on, there wasn't a lot to drag the eye back in again... so I simply played on contrast in the shading later on and used the hand and arm to break through the look downwards, and lead it back up to the face, leaving the eye circling around the middle of the piece before staying in the facial area, where the other hands adds some point of interest for the eye to stay.

After that, I desperately wanted to try something new with the skin shading. So i took a nearly grey tone, and just added the tonal variations on top. It still looked a bit dead, so I made this red-yellow-blue gradient over the whole thing... and whilst I did turn it down A TON later on, it ended me with this rather fun looking in-between result:

Anyways, then I just threw some basic gradients in the background, so I had the values I wanted to achieve later on in there, to aid with the shading, before starting with some basic, textured shading.

For this piece, I wanted to step away from my now usual cell-shading and work with a bit more painty methods and textures! Didn't go well, but I liked the journey, so I'll try again on another piece ^-^"

I then continued with my basic cell-shading and got the dark gradients for the limbs in there. I have no clue why, but I desperately wanted to get some darkness in the body, since it seemed rather too flesh-coloured, you know?

So I thought I might get some contrast in there, since then hands are in front of rather lighter stuff, whilst also hiding that crotch area that I desperately didn't want to shade, not draw attention to, since.. well this is supposed to be SFW hehe

Then... when it came to the rest of the rendering, I had too much fun.

To be honest, I have the feeling that this is the stage where the piece went downhill. At the beginning it was rather simple, and I got some subsurface scattering and ambient inclusion in there, but then I wanted to add a rimlight from the back...

Through that extra light, the focal point of the piece got pushed out of focus, the saturation was turned up, and my values balanced out. My goal of achieving a subtly unsettling, unbalanced piece was crushed through that exact decision and it broke the idea from then on.

After that, I added some basic jewellery and the glowing tattoos, which really didn't help my cause over here. Especially since the extra hands would have been totally overkill and would've just made an unreadable mess of a composition.

Well and then I tried to add a background/context and ruined everything even more QwQ

So yeah... very unhappy with the result, extremely happy with the process though.

I definetely think I did a good job on the lighting, even though it didn't fit the piece and concept whatsoever, so I will implement that into a different piece from now on.
I also had a lot of fun with the subsurface scattering, especially on that hand in front of the white streams. And whilst that hand in general didn't turn out too well, I do indeed like the other one on his face a lot. The rendering there is probably one of the best I did on hands, and I like how bony and skinny it looks.

Again, not very happy with the overall piece, since it just isn't what I had in mind, but it isn't bad nonetheless. I will probably try to rerender the lineart soon though, and try to get the actual drawing I wanted in there haha... but here's my initial attept for the contest anyways ^-^

>>cuddles, pats and gives cookies<<

So, I hope you like the drawing more than I did, and learn at leas a bit from my mistakes?? Idk... do you want me to talk a bit more about composition, and explain how subsurface scattering and ambient inclusion works?
Since I'm working on some tutorials, I thought I may just ask if anyone is interested in these more complex-ish topics ^-^""

Anyways, that's all I got to say for today! Farewell kiddos and remember to take care of yourselves :)