Halsin painting process (Patreon)

Hey guys! I thought I would share with you a look at the process for my latest Halsin piece. As you all may know, I like to use 3D as a base for painting over. I don't always save my layers as I go, but I did for this one! I tend to paint over one layer, maybe two (one for character one for background, then merge). It makes the whole piece a lot more moldable as I paint.

Here, I used my trusty Halsin model as a base. I made him right when BG3 came out and am always tweaking him for my purposes haha. It's a little simpler for portraits such as this one, for larger piece I will slap together some pretty bizarre setups with shapes/props/etc in order to get a nice foundation built.

I have always struggled with visualization and sketching, so when I started using 3D years ago it really was a game changer. It helps a lot to be able to see everything I am doing and test different ideas quickly. For more complicated pieces I'll sketch over, however, and use that as my guide as I paint.

Ever since I ended up with some chronic pain in my drawing hand several years ago, I had to rethink things. The longer I had my pen in hand, it's sort of like a timer started to count down before I ended up in pretty severe pain, sometimes unable to draw for a couple of days or even a week at my worst. As this is my livelihood that was pretty serious...

The sketching/drafting process has always been the most rigorous part for me (and the hardest on my hand) so switching to something I can essentially do with my mouse via 3D programs quite literally saved me. I very rarely deal with pain anymore, as easing off of sketching/linework has made a world of difference for me.

I struggle with a lot of self consciousness about using 3D in my work, so I'm often nervous to share a lot about my process. I really enjoyed showing some of my sculpting and 3D stuff with my Vhaeraun project a few months ago, though.

I hope at the very least it's interested to get a peek at how I do things!!

~Lily