Temporal Master - Splinterlands Art Contest 179th Week

Here's my entry for Splinterlands' weekly art contest.

Let's just jump tight into the process of creating this piece.

Setup:

• Photoshop
• XP-Pen Deco 01 V2
  And a bit of motivation😛

First Step

So, as always I did the outlining with a pressure sensitive brush. Nothing unusual here, tho I seriously need to find myself some decent brushes since doing it all with the one brush I have made plus the default soft and hard ones is a bit tricky.

Second Step

As usual, I did the flat coloring. I tried using lighter colors since I'd be adjusting the lighting (using levels, curve, etc...) in the end, so a brighter tone would mean more freedom in manipulation later... or so I think.

Plus, I used a bit darker shade of blue (in this instance) to color places like under the hoodie or inside the sleeves where there's shado and stuff.

Third Step

Then I tried to get the lights (which is supposed to be this guy's "spell"_ done.
I put two layers of flat colors, masked them, and unmasked the parts where I needed some light.
I played around with blending modes to get the kind of light emission I wanted. The light wasn't as intense, so I duplicated the layer to double the light's strength.

As a finishing touch, I added some feather to the masks (~2px) to make it more real.

Fourth Step

Then I did a simple curve adjustment which ended up making darks darker and lights brighter - resulting in more contrast and a bigger glow from his spell. The words (scriptures?) on his spell were kinda random and I added a couple letters from my memory as well lol.

Final Result

In the end, I ended up adding some more details - Some shadows here and there, more reflections, and colored the poor guy's eyes. Adding the reflections in his eyes was hella satisfying for some reason.

Reference Pic