Princess Sherazade has an incredible gift for dreaming up the most marvelous and fantastic stories anyone has ever told. Genies, thieves, journeys, monsters, magic, and love fill her stories, making them irresistible. So much so that her tales have captured the attention of the feared King of Arabia, and she is forced to stay with him for a thousand and one nights, until she manages to tame the monarch’s rage and become his loyal and loving wife.
1. SKETCHES
The Arab-inspired illustration must bring together all the typical elements of a thousand and one nights, and be as lively and magical as possible. Here there are winks to the tales of Ali Baba, Aladdin, and Sinbad.
2. STRUCTURE
We sketched the image composition, forming the bodies of the characters with pronounced curves that help us define movement and give a sense of action.
3. VOLUME
Although the final posture is somewhat complicated, by simplifying the parts into ovals we can better define the proportions of body and limbs.
4. ANATOMY
Princess Sherazade’s body ought to be sensual and youthful, and her pose sufficiently graceful to look as if she is dancing under her veils. In this image, we put the thief from the story behind her. He has a thin yet wiry body.
5. DETAILS
The clothes are entirely Arabic in design, but it is important for the veil to have enough force to define the action and composition of the scene. The boat is drawn using vectors.
6.1. COLOR
We applied the general background tone by defining the base colors of Sherazade, who has a dark complexion due to her Arab origins.
6.2. COLOR
We applied the shadows of her skin in a new layer, creating the shape of her body in a realistic manner and trying to give volume to its different parts. We began coloring in the horse using a flat, dark gray tone.
6.3. COLOR
We finished defining the shadows of her clothes and added in the highlights and transparent areas.
6.4. COLOR
We then focused on the horse, which we molded using the brush, applying different areas of light and shadow until managing to give it volume. We sketched in the colors of the thieves and lowered the opacity of the layer containing the veil colors.
6.5. COLOR
Using the same realistic brush technique and combining the light and shadow areas contiguously to give the image volume, we create the thieves and boat in the background.
6.6. COLOR
We add highlights to the image to calibrate the lighting, along with textures, and then begin to design the background.
6.7. COLOR
We included a crescent moon in the background and then added light details, textures, and effects to make the image more spectacular.
6.8. COLOR
We made corrections to the light to make the image clearer and make the details more visible, as well as more defined. We also took advantage of this opportunity to slightly retouch the girl’s face and make her body more slender.
FINISHING TOUCHES
- We balance the colors on a Color Balance Adjustment Layer, removing the image’s yellowish tone and adding more blues and magentas.
- We placed a shadow layer over Sherazade’s skin in the Overlay Blend Mode at 23% opacity to give her more luminosity, even though this makes her lose a bit of her olive-Arab skin tone.
Tips & tricks
- This illustration, starting with the tones, was painted in SAI using the program’s Pen Tool, which is a vector hybrid. For specific coloring, we went back and forth between the Pen Tool, the Oil Tool, and the Blur Tool.
- The coloring was done separately on different layers, as this lets us organize the work and prevents the colors from mixing together.
- In Photoshop we were able to create the piles of coins by using the Calligraphy Pen tool, changing the Dispersion and Color Variation.
