Art Samurai homework for July 31st workshop

The theme for this workshop was "Light and Shadow". The assignment was:

Draw any character you want in an action pose, but try to show "dramatic lighting"

on the subject. Feel free to use photo referencing to help with your light/shadows, and be prepared to show the photo reference along with your homework. Be creative and have fun!

I decided to do the Punisher pointing a gun at the camera. Pretty basic concept but I wanted to concentrate on the focus of "light and shadow". 

I started by taking dozens of photo of myself in the laundry room. I used natural light from the outside window and then the laundry room fluorescent light. The TOP  photo is the original photo. I used Photoshop to lighten it (BOTTOM) to see more details. I duplicated the original photo and made it grayscale (MIDDLE) to see just lights and darks.

1. I began with a quick sketch of general shapes. I like to use a color while sketching so I feel more loose. If I sketch in black it makes me feel like I need to product the finished drawing sooner. Weird, I know!
2. I lighten the first sketch and draw over it. I either add a layer to do this or go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > Hue & Saturation then lighten. This is refining the shapes even more.
3. I repeat step 2 and lighten and refine.
4. I add in the dark areas and refine more.
5. I block in a quick background.
6. I add a multiplied layer and increase dark areas and shadow.
7. I stamp all layers into one (highlight the all layers up to this point and hit COMMAND+OPT+E) and hide the blue sketch layers. The new layer of all sketch layers I turn into black & white. IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BLACK & WHITE. I took a photo of some clouds and made that into grayscale and placed it over my background clouds and adjusted it and masked out what I didn't need or like. I then merged it into the layer.
8. I found a good Punisher logo online and adjusted the opacity to low and put it onto his chest using FREE TRANSFORM and WARP located in EDIT. 
9. I inked over some areas and tightened some details.
10. I painted in some more shadows and added some highlights. I gave him a 5 o'clock shadow.
11. I cropped it and added my signature. DONE!

I feel I am improving with Art Samurai lessons. I am a little biased because I am business partners with Tom Nguyen but I get no special treatment. I am just doing the assignments to improve and for fun! Students get their homework critiqued before me.

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If you have questions for me, comment below or email me at:

robb@robbmiller.com

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