The Witch And The Reaper, ORIGINAL ART, Mega POST! STEPS + GIF

Hello everyone Its ME NYCTO! I come to you with a BRAND NEW piece of art! This one I'm quite proud of. I have spent the last few months
just working on sketches and trying to get my style back from all of my lifelike studies. I came to this... it started as a very simple sketch and I liked it so much that I decided to redo it and make it into a full rendered illustration! I will try my best to describe all my thoughts and process as I show you guys my steps :) I hope you all enjoy!

Alright lets begin!! :) Well like I had said It started as a sketch... I believe it was sketch #9? Well here she is, ill show these really quick first.

I really enjoyed the concept of a witch holding a heart with teeth and sort of a life of its own so I began thinking.. What is this heart, what is this witch doing with it? HOW did she get it? And then the story began to grow in my mind a bit.

This is the narrative I wrote after I was finished with my illustration. I believe It describes the picture best.

"The heart pulsed, almost growling, biting the air as she clenched it. With every crunch, every beat and thud it made, a bit of fiery ember pushed itself into the air. With the power of the reapers heart she will obtain all that she has ever desired, souls. With this new power, all she could has ever wanted was now in her reach. She was awestruck with her victory, with how cunning and vicious she had become to obtain the unobtainable. Her toothy smile gleamed with the reflection of the unholy light the snapping organ gave off. With the light of the full moon behind her, she cared not of the repercussions, cared not for the unbalance that was to come. She especially cared not for the dead reaper before her, beginning to decay into a glowing ashy particle, almost hissing as it slowly dissolved. They would for certain seek their revenge.. or better yet, they would most certainly try."

To obtain a reapers heart must be a feat in its own... It was an interesting thought.

SO LETS BEGIN!!!

Step 1. SKETCH!! Ugly ugly sketch.... lol

I had envisioned a different pose and picture at this point and this is where I had started. oh god its ugly.. haha I tend to start really really messy so the first step can either be inspirational or... yea like this... TIME FOR STEP 2!

STEP 2. BLUE Sketch!!

Now the reason blue line is used... its because... well honestly I dont know the exact reason besides it being taught to me in my early years of college. BUT black goes over so nicely, its a way of drawing something before you have to draw it, and redoing anything will usually bare better results. So here she is looking MUCH better. :)

STEP 3!!! LINESSSS

One of my favorite steps is the line work. Since before I began color, before I began this digital journey line work.. INK was my favorite and only medium. So doing some line work, throwing down some inks is always so satisfying. Plus it is the foundation to any art piece in my opinion, even if in the end the lines are gone you still have used them as guidelines. Anyways its time for the next step.

Step 4... Undercolor, picking it out.

I wish I would of saved other color schemes just to show the long process of picking out colors. This had to of been the 10th color scheme I had gone through, I guess I just sort of feel it out. I landed on this. I know I want it to be sort of dark and I want her to have a very eerie look to her so I decided this was a good base.

Step 5! BEGIN PAINTING!!

This is probably one of my favorite steps. Its so simple and it reads so well. You can tell that the heart is glowing and you can tell that she is being effected by the light.. lovely, and so satisfying. :) Its still all under painting and I still have much more to go, this is just the beginning.

I am still mostly painting under the lines at this point, besides her eyes.. I believe I made another layer on top of everything to begin to really bring clarity to her face. You can also see some of the background coming in. This is in a separate under layer of course :).

Step 6!!! Begin the over paint!! XD

Though with this one I am still using the lines as the main source of clarity, I still need to over paint some of this. You can start to see it in the face, and in the hair, and in the hat.. slowly this illustration is coming more and more to life.. NEXT PLEASE!!

Even deeper I go... The heart is my next focus, I have kind of ignored the heart and hand through this whole thing and its time to start bringing it more to life. NEXT PLEASE!!!

STEP 7! MERGING AND PAINTING!!

Now after a while you start to collect many many layers, and this gets really time consuming when your searching for one little detail that you may have been Leary about and decided to make a new layer for.. layer 38, but you dont remember making it! SO what I do, once I am comfortable I merge layers. I still have the trees, the background sky, and the hand and heart as separate but I have merged all of the main witch layers. THIS way I can burn and change the opacity and darkness of my main part. You can see that it now looks much more rich and vibrant... and THAT NOSE! It was looking like it was punched to the side for a while.. Im so glad I caught that mistake.

STEP 8!! THE DEETS MAN!!!

Once you think something is getting close to being done... your wrong... WRONG I tell ya. I needed to start adding texture, adding more light, more smoothing, more background more mouth mist, more embers!! Just more.... This last step in comparison to the previous was a whole days worth... and its not even done... one more PLEASE!! XD

STEP 9! SOMETIMES... you mess up. BUT YOU GET IT DONE! XD

ITS DONE!!! But it was frustrating, if you look back at the previous versions the ear lobe was way off from her face.... after merging everything I had to cut up the ear, put it in a more angled position and then repaint all around the ear, the same thing for the mouth, it was a little bit crooked. BUT I got it done! I added more details, made sure it was nice and smooth and sharp.. Im very happy with it and ready to move on to the next :)

HERES THE GIF MaGIC!!! https://giphy.com/gifs/WvhRWEmyxO6DmuOh7d/html5

WELLLLLLLL again my name was Nycto, and I hope you all enjoyed my art rant. I hope that I wasn't TOO WORDY! Please let me know If I talked too much through this one :) I just want to let you all know whats going on in my head with these.

Thank you again and please feel free to follow me for more! ^_^ -Nycto