#Piranesi fanart full#

I’m a sucker for pencil lineart, as always. I was able to pick and choose a few areas to get an eye-catching hard-edged treatment, while leaving more of the image than usual murky and indistinct. However, I was impressed with how quickly I was able to build up the overall value structure in airbrush, and found that the soft, hazy transitions it created made a great base. The added complexity of the drawing meant that some details were easier to tackle with a brush and inkwash (below). Once again, the usually-interminable black background became the easiest part of the process: Here’s how this same process translated to a scaled-up piece for my Piranesi illustration:Įven though the subject matter is a bit more ambitious, I found myself retracing the steps of my test painting to a large degree. …and added some white charcoal pencil for the little highlights!Īt just a few inches tall, the finished painting hasn’t cost me too much time - but it’s served as a valuable test run for my order of operations, and has given me a bit more confidence with a completely unfamiliar tool. I tried to concentrate the spray a little more strongly near the edges, feet, and under the chin for a soft spotlight effect.įinally, I peeled off the rest of the frisket, and used black Col-erase pencil for the details… With an airbrush, it was almost instantaneous (minus the dry time between layers) and the coverage is perfectly even despite my wild lack of skill.Ībove, airbrushing more ink (same dilution as I used for the background, but just a single light layer) to the body of the lion.

With a brush, it’s one of the slowest, most mind-numbingly boring parts of my process it takes forever and I never seem to get a smooth enough finish or deep enough value. I can’t say enough good things about the airbrush for this sort of large flat wash. I used the airbrush to spray the black background with a few layers of diluted india ink, then cut away most of the remaining frisket (I wanted the collar to be ink-free, so I left it masked off until the very end).

It took a little bit of experimenting to get the right amount of pressure where I was cutting through the film without scratching the paper – with a fresh blade, though, you only need a SUPER light hand. I applied frisket film to the drawing (I used a low-tack film, though it did lift some of the graphite when I peeled it off - something to keep in mind when applying it to more elaborate sketches.)Ībove, cutting the frisket with an Xacto, then peeling it away. Over the course of my research and reference-seeking, I learned that a winged lion is the symbol of Saint Mark, patron saint of prisoners - a connection too good to pass up.įor this piece, I wanted to audition a new tool: airbrush! When trying a brand new technique, I don’t like to risk sinking too much time and energy into a full-size painting that might end up in the trash heap a tiny “test piece” like the one below is usually a safer means of learning the ropes.įirst, a quick pencil sketch, based on a cool artifact off Pinterest. Like the statue, Piranesi is both trapped and transformed by the influence of the natural world around him. Instead, I opted for the sketch above, centering on one of the drowned statues (“a Lion enmeshed in a cage of coral”) that felt symbolically appropriate. It has such a unique, specific mood the story is told completely through the eyes of Piranesi himself, who is immersed in such symbiosis with his environment that depicting him visually would have just felt wrong. My work tends to be narrative and/or character-based, but I felt like I’d be doing this book a disservice if I tried to approach it from either of these directions.

#Piranesi fanart full#

The story centers on a nameless man we know only as Piranesi - trapped within an infinite labyrinth full of changing tides, shifting weather patterns, birds, and statuary (a place he refers to interchangeably as “the house” and “the world”), he has no apparent knowledge of how he came to be there, or any concept that anything - or anyone - else exists outside of it. Here’s some new personal work: a mock book cover illustration for a recent favorite, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.