The Pirate Skeleton King

The Pirate Skull King, an illustration I created using the charcoal like brushes in Procreate. I liked the rough design that I was finding when I was laying in large brush strokes, and purposefully didn’t start with a line drawing, because I wanted to see what I could come up with spontaneously with the marks I put down on the canvas. I worked through my design by being free and loose, and letting myself be as creative as I could, and simply let the joy of creating be the main thing I was focusing on. I also kept everything black and white, and instead of painting in the light values, I just erased the darker areas to both cut into my shapes, as well as a “drawing” tool to help me refine certain areas of detail. I added the color below, and only added color to the top layers when I was satisfied with the direction everything was going in. I also tried to be as creative as possible with the color balance tool, for the shadows, mid tones, and the highlighted areas, and tried to find cool designs and color compositions by shifting colors dramatically and slowly dial it in when I found a color scheme that I liked. Normally I work a bit tighter, but being completely loose really helped me a lot I found, and I ended up coming up with shapes and color compositions I normally wouldn’t come up with. I’m going to experiment with this process further and see how this affects my work going into the future, and maybe this might be the thing that helps me create better designs, and to have the most fun with my work that I can by not being afraid of being spontaneous and ever curious.

I hope you guys like how this piece turned out, and if you read this far, thank you for taking the time to read my thought process on this. I hope you have a wonderful day, and thanks for checking out my art! :)