Nicki Minaj painting
Tonight I was totally exhausted from studying, and decided to draw a little something, just to chill a little.
The picture started as a VERY chibifized version of cartoon Harley Quinn ( XD ), then I started playing around with the sketch, changing it little by little... And finally I realised it no longer resembles anything like Harley. Looking at the figure I saw Nicki - those wide hips, you know.
After finishing the sketch I felt no longer like doing lines. Plus - I never draw humans, I'm the kind of animal artist. The lines were a no-no for me for drawing a human, but painting sound sooo time consuming and hard... I actually made a digital painting once before (it was a dog, and it took over 20 hours total. And it's still not finished x_x), but escaping the comfort zone is the thing I need to push myself to do more often.
That's when I decided. A painting. Of a human. A living human.
I was nicely surprised, because this took only like one and half and hour total (including goofing around with sketch), and the painting process was relaxing on it's own.
I chose Nicki Minaj look from the music video 'Swish swish' with Katy Perry.
I saved some steps to show how I figured this thing out C:
Finished, cleaned sketch. I decided this to be my first step, as there were too many 'working sketches' to mention them.
It's rough and basic, but gives the idea of the picture.
Now I added blobs of solid colors, so I could remove the distracting sketch layer. Also added some basic swatches on the right. They help A LOT during the process.
A pretty big jump here lol
At this point I had face and skin shaded. I KNOW HER FACE DOESN'T RESEMBLE NICKI. I tried. I failed. End of story ._.
And just to point it here - I had no idea what I was doing there. It's just some random paint strokes I made to make it look hooman-ish or something.
Oh the fun part. Hair. I was so glad I made the hair as a color blob on another layer. Oh so glad was I /Yoda mode off/
I could have spent some more time on this part, but I got lazy, bruh.
The latex part! It was fun, I love the look of latex.
Just kidding. I had no idea how light works on this. I made a lot of screenshots from the video just to learn how the light bounces on Nicki's thighs. I'm still not sure I understand, but I looked OK.
I added some simple shadow behind the figure to not leave everything blank. And that's all. That's the whole step.
Oh, and I added some kind of signature (I guess? lol) at the final picture, resized it and voila!
If you'd like to criticize this piece or give me some tips for futre - GO AHEAD. I'm total newbie when it comes to this kind of art, but it was really fun!
Do you want to suggest any other celeb for me to draw in this style?