Dark Cupid

For the Concept Cookie Winter 2015 Contest: conceptcookie.deviantart.com/a…

The character is to be a 'dark' cupid, who shoots arrows of despair and lonliness instead of love.  Well hey, I'm all for that!

Instead of an 'evil' imp, I decided to transform a chubby, rosy-cheeked, golden-curled cherub into an emaciated, sallow-skinned, bald cherub.  This was very depressing to work on, so I'm happy (so to speak) on how it turned out.


This was done mostly in Manga Studio, with a little bit of Photoshop.

   First, I did the sketch and line work in MS, and filled in the base tone with a pale skin colour that was on the palette.  Then I used the watercolour brush to paint on purple and green shadows, just kinda globbed on, almost.  I was going to send all that to Photoshop where I could use my Magic Scumble Brush to blend it all together into smooth shading... but that ended up totally sucking.  :/

   Then I tried drawing highlights and shadow on top of the watercolour and base colour, using a colored pencil.  Then i blended that with the finger smudging tool.  I really like how it came out; i didn't blend it with the lower layers, just smudged it around over top.  And then used a large tip for the colored pencil to go over it and give it that rough charcoal texture.

   I wasn't sure how I was going to do the wings.  The sketch was very scribbly, and the outline kinda just followed the limbs, with some stray feathers here and there, and some ridiculous V shapes in the wingcovers.  Then I figured I should draw separate feathers and put them on the wings afterwards.  I drew a bunch of ragged and broken ones.

   I turned the wings and feathers light grey, and then 'painted' in the feather details with the Gpen in black and white.  I shaded beind the wingcover feathers and all, and they started looking decently dimentional.  Then I stuck the individual suckers in there.  Blood splatters applied in Photoshop from a brush set.  And then  I used black (and some white) with the colored pencil again to shade and texture the limbs.

   The background clouds I threw together in Photoshop.  Started with a dusky purple base, then threw in some greens and golds and greys with a big pastel brush.  On top of that, I used a large cloud brush in shades of light and dark greys.


   So, *mostly* Manga, which I'm pretty proud of.  (But I don't think I'll ever give up my Photoshop!)