Changeling Queen

It took a while, but for this piece I wanted to do something a bit more ambitious. As such I have a lot of things to talk about, so I apologize for the large amounts of text here—feel free to skip.

For the line art I took a different approach this time. I've done some inking in Gimp before, but always found it a bit of a pain, and often the results were not quite optimal. I'm not sure why I find line art troublesome. I have the feeling that for such very precise work, my tablet surface has just a bit too little friction to keep enough control over the stylus. For painting this is no issue but if you need to get an outline right in one stroke it becomes a problem.

However, I realized that I am now pretty efficient vectoring in Inkscape. Given the amount of time I waste in Gimp undoing and fixing things, I figured I might as well vector my line art. It may be a bit slower overall, but the step up in quality is—at least to me personally—the difference between passable and almost perfection. A bit more work, but the end result is much more satisfying.

The colouring and shading was the most time consuming part of the process. To give an idea of what my final file looks like, I'll list the layers used. From bottom to top I have:
– flat colours
– shading layer (layer mode grain merge)
– wing colours (separate layer because of slight transparency)
– shading for wings (grain merge)
– highlights (screen)
– line art
The set up where I add shading with a grain merge layer is one I've come to like. It's a very simple formula, and allows shading with both lights and darks, as well as manipulating the hue of an area.

All layers except the line art are set to be transparent underneath the outlines. This automatically divides the image in different areas, which can be easily selected with the magic wand tool. It acts as an automatic aid in painting within the lines.

All in all a very interesting painting to work on, combining several tricks I've learned in recent times. Here's how much time I roughly spent:
– traditional sketch: < 30 minutes
– digital sketch: 2 hours
– vectoring line art: 4 hours
– colouring and shading: ~8 hours? I lost count here.

Created with Inkscape, Gimp and Wacom Bamboo tablet.


Creative Commons 3.0 – BY NC ND
Queen Chrysalis from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (c) Hasbro