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Taraakian — X-23
Published: 2009-04-05 02:34:38 +0000 UTC; Views: 10017; Favourites: 173; Downloads: 151
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Description
Laura Kinney aka X-23She is dead sexy, no?
I spent a lot more time on post-color shading and blending with this than I usualy do, and it shows. I'll have to dedicate more time to touch ups in the future.
X-23 is a very tragic character and makes Wolverine's plight pale in comparison. If you have the means to read the X-23 Innocence Lost and Target X comic series, I recommend you do. Be warned though, its one of the most depressing things I think I have ever read, and the most bloody.
Great Penciling - Alisson Rodrigues
Color - Me
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Comments: 37
I adore this character and you did a great representation of her spirit so kudos to you. Love it.
She definitely looks strong and brave, so you definitely get the mood across.
However, I do wish that your coloring didn't rely so much on the airbrush tool, which really doesn't allow for the shading to create form, texture and volume. The jacket, the hair, and the skin all have the same texture so they could be made from the same materials.
Hair should general be drawn in blocks of hair, to define shape, and texture. To do this you define areas of hair where they tend to flow together or clump, and treat each area individually depending on the light and shade. This gives the hair form, value, and bounce. Also it frames the face and gives them that extra sex appeal so important to female superheroes e.deviantart.com/emoticons/w/w… " width="15" height="15" alt="
A leather jacket should have sharp highlights that accentuate the deep creases of the jacket. Leather jackets, particularly black, tend to have a strong black and whites and very little grey. This is exaggerated even more in comics.
The skin can be soft and smooth as you have here, though a little definition on the muscles, and places where the bones are close to the surface (knees, knuckles) will show she is no light-wieght. Also you may want to get a nice deep shadow to define where the breasts seperate. As it stands she looks like a a cup on the left and a d on the right, the form is correct on your beautiful corsette, but she needs a little help in the cleavage.
Your anatomy seems solid except for the legs, you drew the legs well, but the mass of the upper part of the legs seem out of proportion with the bottom. either reduce the width on the top of the leg, or increase the muscle mass on the bottom and it should look great.
Great drawing e.deviantart.com/emoticons/b/b… " width="15" height="15" alt="
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I appreciate your analysis a lot. I've only been doing color about 6 months and apart from one tutorial, am mostly self-taught.
I noted on the image's discription, but incase you didn't see it, I did not do the line work. I do a little line work of my own, but in this case I only did the color. I actually do not use an airbrush tool. I normally use a hard round brush for base color and use soft round brushes of varying opacity for shading. On occasion I use an airbrush for blending, but not very often. I deffinantly need to work on varying textures a bit more. On the subject of her breasts... I know they look a bit out of proportion. There wasn't much I could do about it without looking very funny because the drawing itself was awkward in that area.
Thankyou for the advice. I'm always looking for helpful tips and tricks.
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Oh I am sorry for that, I should read the descriptions before commenting.
Ah airbrush is just what I call soft round brushes in photoshop, so sorry to confuse. But are you sure you can't had a cleavage shadow to help fix the proportions, and maybe a shadow below the right breast to make it appear larger? I know the shape of the corsette restricts it a little, but it may help.
Anyway, beautiful job nonetheless. Your did a great job
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I updated the corslet and the hair slightly. Look better?
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The corset looks much better, I still think it needs a bit of a shadow to define the cleavage on the skin, but that is a great improvement.
The hair could use a little more detail, but now it looks a lot more free flowing with the breaks in the mass.
Good job 
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4am also... ill clean up the boobs more tomorow. Thanks again.
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Ah you're right, a shadow on the corslet itself below the breast would help a lot, I'll try that. Right now the corslet looks completely inanimate.
I can see where a hard round brush would be better for shading details, but do you think its better for even larger things like skin? The reason I use soft round is because it looks smoother. Perhaps smoother is not always better.
By the way, I was downloading the X-23: Innocence Lost and X-23: Target X comics while I was coloring this, and I read them after I finished and then wished I had read them before hand. I may not have been in the mood any longer though. That was one of the most depressing things ive ever read.
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I read her origin, but I still need to buy those, I have the X-23 Wannabe novel. Beautiful artwork especially at the point where the main character slows time <3. And yes it is very depressing. Try "Runaways" It's about homeless Marvel teens but its very funny 
The idea behind the hard brush is you keep the brush hard, but the opacity low, this way you create an interesting texture and set down the shape and shadows to create volume. With the soft you run the risk of not defining these forms. Here is an awesome example by an artist better then I, [link] and another [link]
You'll notice how sharp shadows are on male skin in comics, while women are smoother to maintain sex appeal. The muscles are still defined, but the shadows are softer and less severe.
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I'll check out Runaways if I can find it. Im not familiar with the other X-23 novel you mention. Whats the actual title of it?
I see what you mean with the hard brush vs soft brush. I've tried using hard brushes for shading before, but it always ended up looking messy, which is why I switched to using soft. I have no explaination for why it never occured to me to simply use lower opacity on a hard brush to shade. Oversights.
Ill try shading with a hard brush on whatever I do next, which will probably be tomorow. A day without improvement is no day to me.
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Oops its NYX: Wannabe I got my acronyms mixed up.
The hard brush method is not something I warmed up to until a few years ago myself. Cedarseed snapped me out of it, and this tutorial really helped [link] she is amazing, so hopefully this tut will help
Good luck and happy painting. Your doing great for self taught.
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Ohhh NYX. Well now I feel silly. I actually had that but I deleted it because honestly I couldn't figure out what it was. I guess I should have gone past the first few pages.
Thats a helpful tutorial. I'll try that method of only 1 or 2 layers sometime, but im not sure if I should reinvent the wheel for myself. I usualy divide black and white into two fill layers then create groups with layers between the fill layers. The one tutorial which I basically learned from is here : [link] Its really easy to keep things clean when they are divided. I'll certainly be trying the hard brush though.
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It has a different main character, but X-23 shows up a few issues in, I won't give it away but she turns to a very sad career, though understandable considering what she's been through 
Ooh that's a great tutorial. Thanks for sharing. Though I'd imagine the straight black and white gradient probably wouldn't be suitable for mood lighting, but maybe it can be tweaked. Actually I need to experiment, but I think you just helped my solve my night time colors problem o_O. I have so much trouble with mood colors.
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I actually find it pretty easy to ossociate a certain color with a certain mood. In the last picture I colored which was Ms Marvel, I used light yellow and blue in the sky. Not because thats the color which a typical sky is, but because I was trying to convey the feeling of freedom and brightness of soaring with the birds above the clouds.
The only problem is making it look good. Im still working on that part haha.
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I understand the color theory, it's just the execution of the painting. I paint almost everything like its a bright sunny day, which is very restrictive, but there is a disconnect when I think "okay night scene should have blue shadows and warm lights" and when I paint it looks terrible. Just takes practice
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Oh I understand, I have the same problems. I haven't even really begun to get into different colors of shadows and lighting, but I need to. I figured it would be better to get basic shading down before trying to do situational color shading. To be honest Im not even sure how to go about different colors of shading other than to layer ontop of everything else with a low opacity brush. I've been saving and looking at tons of reference lately though for lightning. I spend hours looking at this stuff and totally lose track of time. Good inspiration though.
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I suppose the best thing to do in the case of humanoids is to take a bunch of photos in different lights and pull the colors from them. That's the only thing I can think of.
But lightning? That is very tricky, I would probably take the lazy route and just make a brush out of a photo :Lol:
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yea but shes doing good now.nice work by the way.
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how you coloured her skin is AMAZING. I can't believe how...like well blended it is! DX you did the sheen sooo well. Could've shaded the hair on the right side a bit more diverse. Like show a couple seperate hair pieces or whatever, but it's still great. What medias did you use?
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looks great, it's better
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You're right about the side of her hair, it needs more depth.
I just use Photoshop and a Wacom Bamboo 4x6 tablet to color.
Thanks for the comment.
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no problem
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slightly older version, CS2
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oh wow. isn't CS2 expensive?
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I couldn't tell you, I got it as a gift from an uncle.
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ooh, so is it hard to learn? I don't know if you had a lower class photoshop from before your CS2, but I'd imagine it'd be harder with all the other functions
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No I never used any imaging software before I installed Photoshop CS2. I used to do some 3D modeling about 10 years ago back in the early Half-life1 days, but thats about it. Is it hard to learn? Well with the right tutorial, its not hard to learn the basics, but getting good at using it is another story. If you look back through my "old stuff" folder, you'll see how terrible my first few colors are. Each time you do something you get better at it. I've mainly self-taught aside from 1 tutorial which I needed to use to learn proper use of the layering system. Beyond that its been experimentation and observing the works of others.
The tutorial I learned from is here: [link]
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freaking AMAZING tutorial-I had no idea you could actually do so much with photoshop!! let's hope that the people on the comments were right and that PS 5 works. I wanna try it out
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Sorry, Im not sure why I never saw this comment before now.
Not much trouble finding the effects although there are some instances where his wording in the tutorial can be slightly confusing.
If you have any other further questions or just looking for general advice feel free to send me a note.
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ahh, that's fine
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No I didn't have trouble finding the effects. Once you create the fill layers from the background, its just all about creating groups for different parts of your image and then putting down a base color for the parts with gradient maps ontop of them. Then use the burn tool and dodge tool to shade the gradient. Its actually pretty simple its just a matter of getting good at doing it. There is one thing though you should know which that tutorial doesn't mention. If you're having trouble getting something to be the shade you want, you can lower the opacity of your brush to shade/lighten less per stroke. Also the blur tool is extremely useful for making your shading blend together.
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really? thanks! I'll keep that in mind. lol, up to this point, I've been colouring with one colour and having to switch the shades manually, not by burning it or with the gradient maps. it took me so long to figure out how to make your lineart without erasing the lines! (with that multiply thingy)I suppose I'm just not cut out for learning digital art programs XD I'll keep at it though.
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You'll learn it, its not that hard, you just need to experiment with all the tools and go through step-by-step with that tutorial that I linked. I went through the tutorial step by step about 3 times before I really got the hang of it, then went from there.
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lol, i'll probably have to do it more than 3 times before I know my way around the basics >.>
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