This is not exactly a tutoral, but a walk-though on how the piece "Legend of the Vampire III" was produced.
I can't really do tutorial on how to paint yet, but hope this is still useful for people who are intereted in the way I work :)

First of all, do the pencil draft!

There are few requirements from the client for this piece. It needs to be bright in colour and tone, and since all the previously book cover arts I did have the character's face in some angles, they want it to be a straight-on view of the face, and not covered by hair and stuff.

Costume style "goth-punk" with some references they want me to use:



They also suggested a few themes for me to think about. One of which is to have the character sitting in a mansion, holding a glass of wine. I took a day brainstorming all other possibilities with very rough thumbnail sketches, and decided that this is the best setting for a feasible composition to be used in the book cover layout.

I spent some time to develope the sketch, and sent the draft to the editor of my client.

The editor has some quick feedback about the expression and lighting. They have some doubt about the background, and stressed that it needs to be bright.

So I did a very quick colour example showing how bright I could make this picture to be, and some quick work on fixing his face to make him look more presentable, and then I sent the draft again.

The feedback this time is that it need to be REALLY bright, like the example here:


I decided that the original background would not work, and came up with another background in my next colour draft, with more development in the character's face face to indicate what kind of look I am going for this time for this character.

This was given a go-ahead, with a reminder that they want him to have a more majestic smile.

There's no secret in rendering. Just research and look for the right reference that will fit into my planning of the image, and then paint it out one by one.

Some major changes that I made:

The face

Somehow at some stage of drafting, I already decide to go for the narrow-nosed girlie looking type of male, which I think would appeals more to the female audience, whom is who I think the book is targeting.

However, I have never drawn one such character, so I look into one of my favourite illustrator Tomomi Kobayashi's characters to grasp that feel, as I also remembered that her male characters always have this majestic smile. It should fit my client's need.

The chair

I searched internet and found some strange looking ones which I think could be used in this setting. I combined some idea from the reference and my own design.

The skull

After I started painting the chair and fixing the pose of the character accordingly, I realised that it's not possible to have his hand placed on the handle the way it does in the draft. I tried a few things until I decided that placing a skull on his lap should work.

some details in the final image in its original resolution with the corresponding references that they are based on:

I painted with a chalk texture brush in most of the places.
For the metalic effect I would paint the parts in a seperate layer, and play with curve to get the desired shineness.
I also used a lot of colour adjustment layers in overlay mode to get to the final colour scheme.

Good thing that they are happy and I don't have to change a bit!