Lion Hunt

First illustration of the new year!
This one continues the Lion Masters series. From the get go I imagined this piece’s focus to be the local tone pattern. I usually focus on the light/shadow pattern, so this was a personal challenge.

To achieve this look, I had to expose the image for the lights. Scroll over to the black and white sketch and you’ll see how I have 2 distinct value groups for the light and one for the shadow. I also really limited where I placed my dark values, to really limit my darks and open up my middle and light value ranges.

As far as color goes, it was fun to play with color temperatures instead of value to define plane changes, which also keeps my value range limited.

The textures where an after though, to try and push the look of an oil paint. But I always try to use my marks in order to improve my image, so the “bevel/emboss” technique helped me soften edges as well as adjust contrast and texture where i needed it.