Twilight’s Wicked Embrace

This project has been one of my first proper full scale color illustration projects in many years, excluding comics. I created this as a special project that I will be announcing later, but I wanted to provide a little “behind the scenes” view of how it came together.

Conceptually, I worked from the title and mood first, which is rare. I knew what I wanted for size and scale, so I started sketching.

Since this is portfolio work, I asked my wife to act as my art director and pick out the concept she liked the best. This was the winner.

So from there, I’m looking for reference photos. In the old days, we’d have assembled a bunch of friends and draped them with sheets and hoped that no one thought we were organizing a Klan rally. Today, I use stock photo repositories and AI.

So let’s talk about AI images a bit. This may be a post all on its own in the future, but you should know that I use AI images generators for reference images, very carefully, with specific guardrails in place to avoid stylistic influence on my art. It starts with that concept and sketch. The sketch is the map to the final art and that NEEDS to come from your hand and mind without AI’s influence. If you don’t make it yours from a foundational level, it won’t be yours at all.

I use Midjourney for the most part. In my image prompts, I am very intentional in dictating that my images are “ultrarealistic photos”. I want to simulate the conditions that I would use if I were taking my own photos as closely as possible. My prompt here is “Ultrarealistic Photo, Ultra Wide Angle Shot view, A forest of thick trunks of trees, many ghostly spectral hooded figures standing and hugging the trees wearing loosely draped white robes only seen from behind, white clothing, hugging the tree, arms wrapped around the trees, embracing the trees, spooky, ethereal, misty forest, foreboding, Midnight lighting”.

To me, this is a legitimate use of these tools that is no different from using reference photos.

Here is my final sketch using a combination of many reference images, including some that I shot myself.

The next bit of the process becomes using art materials and techniques that further distance the final product away from that “AI look”. Combined with actual personal style and technique, you arrive at something that is “yours”, but AI tools helped you achieve.

From here, I go to Procreate on the iPad and I start the base drawing. Normally I like to use digital pen and ink with line variation evocative of brush or quill pen. I’ve been wanting to play with other Procreate tools, so I thought I’d do the line work in sepia pencil.

Next I lay in “flats” with the Procreate Studio Brush which is a sort of fat brush with line variation. This is to establish a base color for each element on different layers – cream robes, brown trees, grey birches, etc. I use two versions of this brush – one with medium streamline and one without. On top of the flats, I start adding shading details with a set of watercolor brushes I bought that are super fun.

And here’s the finished product:

I sent them off to Printique for prints and they turned out beautifully. As a proof of concept working this way, I’m extremely happy with the results and will be doing more work using this technique.

If you would like a 9×12 Photo Print of Twilight’s Wicked Embrace of your very own, I am selling them for $10.00 plus $3 shipping. These prints are matte finish with white border and A4 image area. Digital Type C professional quality photo prints use silver halide photo paper and emulsion printing.