Reference Study - Squirrel Adventure

This 3 image reference study stretched into 2 weeks as I got distracted by other art projects and also had my energy drained due to on-going health problems.

And then Blue Prince was released and I forgot that blogging was a thing I did.

But a long weekend has given me the downtime I need to return to my hobbies and project and also Blue Prince.

Reference Images

The big masked creature is by Bryn Jones @artwithbryn. Trying to find the source really highlighted for me how awful it is when artists only have an Instagram page. I don’t want Facebook/Meta touching my computer so I’m not going to log into Instagram on my computer, which means I can only see the last 9 posts from a user >_>

The squirrel is Acorn collector by mousse on DeviantArt.

And the boat on the waves, my piece used as colour scheme inspiration, is by Dmitrij on Dribble.

Thumbnailing

Tried out a few different compositions and angles for the piece. Most of them focused on a squirrel POV. I wanted to show the size difference, to convey how large this forest monster could be.

Basic colours

I tried out a few different colour variations on the thumbnail after choosing the winning one. I knew all the blue would be a challenge given I was working with a forest instead of the ocean.

Day 2 - Refining

I went with the middle option for colours but felt it still needed to be revisited. I tried to push the colours a bit and see where I would go brighter or darker.

Day 3 - oil paints

I once again felt overwhelmed by how to begin painting. I was coming off of the hard lines of the Hades study, which felt safe and doable, but not fitting for this piece. I wanted to be a little more consistent than my last reference study, they Fey Boat, but I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go.

I really liked the painted style of the monster piece so I ended up doing some Kagi searches for some CSP oil paint tutorials.

I ended up finding one that even included a free custom made brush pack. So I downloaded the brush pack, watched the video a few times, downloaded a canvas texture and started laying in the light and dark areas.

Work continues

I was trying to follow the light and dark focus on the oil paint base layer but I really struggled with when it came to laying down the colours. Everything felt really messy and muddy while barely having any oil paint vibe at all.

I didn’t save any in-progress shots from this time which was a weird choice given how slowly this piece moved. Something I’ll want to get into the habit of. Need to fight off the fear that I’ll fill up the computer with a bunch of in-progress JPEGs.

Final piece

While I went through a few stages of really hating this and feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing, I do like the final piece.

I spent a lot of time trying to fix the field and it’s the one part I’m still unhappy with. I really like the field in the original monster inspo piece, and I just have a feeling it’s gotta be thanks to a brush? I hate to lean on “I didn’t have the right brush though”. It could easily be that I also just didn’t master the brushes I did have.

But aside from that I really like how the tree stump turned out, the squirrel itself has a nice fuzz. The trees are basic but I think that’s okay because they aren’t the focus. And the monster even came out looking kind of fuzzy? So I like enough of it that I think I’ll give oil brushes another shot in the future.

New game release!

For the month of March my wife teamed up with a comic artist to work on another VN project, a point and click adventure titled Escape from Precinct 27.

Along with it we launched our little studio into the world, Studio Wtchcrft, and now I’m spending 10% of my time on marketing and research, and looking into ways we can make money to keep making games. Also been spending time doing web dev. Made the studio a website and hand wrote a presskit page for Precinct 27 that I’m thinking of making available to the public as a template.

Conclusion

My spare time is being pulled in a lot of different directions right now, and my health isn’t feeling good enough to pursue them all. Going to do either a WAP or anatomy week next as a hopefully easier art time while I keep pursuing game studio stuff.