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SHE IS CALLED GRANDMAMA NESSIE

And this bad boy here - if you watch Arcane ;D
CHEMTECH ANIVIA / ZAUNIVIA

REFS:

LONG TIME NO SEE?!?!?! Got pretty busy with work and stuff, but here it is ~
The newest card

12/26 is my 2 year anni for Art School, so in the spirit of the holidays and recently finishing my graduation project, here's the before and after of my level ups

STRUCTURES~

ART WAR~

MAGICS and CREATURES~

CONCEPTS and TEXTURES ~

ELEMENTS and MOOD~

MYTHICAL SCAPES and CREATURES~

I AM BAAAAAAACK FROM HOLIDAYS of doing absolutely nothing
with a Gamestormers Card~

SUMMON THE TREEFOLK

Long time no see?!?!?! back with a character card though

Magnus the Maker

Aww thank you It has been super helpful with feedback from peers as well to keep you going ~

@LesleyCarol yup! And thank you

One thing that I do a lot more now is to utilize 3d models for lighting. Magnus is a dragon and you probably won't be able to find a direct reference, but by piecing together references of a human body (he's pretty close), and a light source similar to where you want it to be, you can get a good ref and guess for where the light should be on your character itself.

Another thing is thinking in planes, which I learned a bit from @WeirdOwl . Since the scales make him extra angular, it was easier to think: ok this area is lit by the light, these faces are lit by the bounce, these areas are completely dark.

In accordance with thinking about light as planes, you also think of shadows in the same way. So the interaction between light and shadow shapes makes a piece interesting. I am pretty good at guesstimating cast shadows and grouping my values now, so being able to balance those also helps boost your general lighting.

I think in general though, the best way to get better at lighting is to get better at values management, and to get better at value management, I would suggest trying to do two-tone and three-tone paintings. Since lighting is such a big part of the composition, it kind of ties into that.

Essentially, you use black + white (two-tone), or black + white + 1 shade of gray (three-tone) to try to illustrate a composition. This is where you start to figure out how you can lay out a composition with basic shapes, and then understand how they interact with each other. You want the light to tell a story so setting them somewhere interesting (in a direction, in the middle, etc) will dictate how each piece is lit.

Example 1: In Magnus the Maker, he's the Maker, so the emphasis is on him making stuff. I should make that bright. This is a character card, so I should also have a good portion of his face showing.
Example 2: In Summon the Treefolk, my top directional light highlights the face and silhouette of the tree dude. He's important and is in the name of the card. The summoning action is also important, so let's highlight and add some magic to the peeps summoning him at the bottom.

An exercise of the two-tone thing - here's something I did for a Brainstorm class:
We took movies and basically did extremely small thumbnails in two-tone shapes. This helps with composition and also figuring out how professional directions set their lights and shadows.

Of course!

This little McMuffin's full-time job is to knock stuff over and look at you innocently