Digital Painting | 01

"Hey, since when do you upload digital paintings—"

Since, like, two minutes ago. I'm primarily a designer, but a goal of mine for 2020 is to start sharing more of my artwork. I've always been private with my paintings because I never felt like I was good enough, or that people would care.

I'm starting to learn that it's less about if I think I'm good enough, and more about sharing because it's something that I worked hard on and personally care about. The reason I fell in love with creating in the first place is because: one, I just really enjoy it, and two, the feeling of sharing work and possibly inspiring others is really powerful to me.

And maybe that doesn't just have to be through design.

This painting is fantasy-inspired

What started as a (really bad) sketch while watching Lord of the Rings, turned to something that I kept with—which is usually really hard for me. I've always been fascinated by elves and mythical creatures, so maybe that helped.

As I worked, I simply had fun with it. I didn't plan anything. No references were used (though, they're very helpful and you should use them). I didn't research different color palettes. This was me, my ipad, and my thoughts.

Anyway, this painting took approximately 8 hours. All was done in Procreate and then exported into Photoshop to manually burn & dodge areas (specifically the eyes.)

Slowly, but surely

I've been digitally painting for 10 years. I still remember the day I got my first Wacom tablet (not to forget the blur of years following where we were practically inseparable); and my digital arts classes where my teachers would get upset at me for painting instead of, like, working in Flash or Dreamweaver or something (RIP).

My point of telling you this in plain text and not showing a typical, flashy Behance project is because this is the first time in those 10 years that I feel somewhat confident in my drawing abilities and want to tell that story with my own words...and I also didn't plan this far visually. It took a while, and I'm getting there.

And I hope that if you feel even a little bit similar to how I felt, you leave this project knowing that you're getting there, too.

Cheers,
Kate