Today I want to share with you the work done for drawing, inking and coloring my lady in traditional Sardinian dress.
It was a long job, divided in various steps, which lasted for several weeks … because life and because of other interests I had meanwhile. When I have a job so big before me… I tend to be scared a bit...
It started one night, I sat at my computer and I realized that I had never drawn a Sardinian woman in a traditional dress. What kind of person am I? The clothes are beautiful and have so many details and colors, at least an attempt had to be done right? I had drew a woman in traditional Korean dress (Hanbok) several years ago with disastrous results as you can see, the background brings out the blood from my eyes … the dress however was not bad (I have 30 photos of step by step),
and yet I’ve never drew one that wore the traditional dress of my land? It wasn’t right, things did not add up.
I went to bed with these thoughts and the next morning I ventured into the drawing. In a few hours it was done. Actually the pose and the girl with a generic dress took less that I thought, it had been a long time since I drew yet I remember that was fast (in fact the face then was crap … but oh well). The longest part was deciding how to make the whole dress.
I did not use any reference. Nothing, I could not find anything that I liked, nothing in my mind did that thing letting me know that the dress was what I wanted, and finally I decided to do my own thing. Therefore let me tell you, this traditional Sardinian dress DOESN’T EXIST not in these forms anyway, it is my free interpretation (before anyone can think of false history or something). Foundamental role tho, played gowns from Buddusò, the most similar to this, and Dorgali, to which were added a number of details taken from other places. In Sardinia every place basically has its own traditional dress, and some are very different one another, if you look it up on google you’ll easily see that. But isn’t it gorgeous like that? 😉
So in a nutshell this dress as I composed it, I doubt exists anywhere, but that’s okay, because art in my opinion should not be harnessed, it doesn’t obviously want to be a faithful reproduction of an original, I didn’t have enough material for that. It was more of an exercise in style, a test to see myself dealing with really complex things, plus I wanted to use my tabled again.
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At first the jacket was closed with ribbons like a corset, but I did not like it at all and so I changed them with a hook and eye closure, I have seen it on other clothes, sadly the ribbons were horrible even to I woudl ahve liked them to be there > w < !
For the rest of it, the longest phase was the inking it all, a very long work and for whom knows me… patience isn’t my forte for sure, so many areas were surely ruined by my hand (aka the nose, and every piece of jewelry) and the fact that I always draw on A4 doesn’t help for sure!
Let me give you a piece of advice … drawn on large sheets if you need to do this level of detail > w <
ok now I’ll stop blabbering too much and show you some step by step with some lines to explain them
First thing I did was choosing few of the base colors from pics I liked and then creating my personal palette. Only after I was able to place each base color on a separate layer.
As you can probably tell every piece here had something like 3/4 colors each, and to them I added few more while coloring 🙂
I then colored each part of the dress and woman with its own base color (except the hair that happened to be done all in once pf) because I wanted to use the clipping masks for each of them…the work was already huge as it was…no need to make my pc crash too.
As you can easily tell I was desperate already.
Lately I put shadows on the skin on a different layer from the base, with the light on too. I then did the exact same thing with every base color when I put on the shadows.
For each base color there is, in fact, one or more clipping masks with the shadows and light, to make it easier to blend.
I Saved some Jewelry reference too, because I knew I was goign to need to redraw them..especially the neck piece that had a shit shape…like really…
I then started working on the tiny details, like embroidery on the jacket and the shirt. That shirt killed me, it was so hard to do it >w< plus I’m really not patient at all…that’s why it all looks still very quick and approximative even tho I spent so much time on it OTL
Even harder was to work on the golden thread of the embroidery… colouring metals is already hard, but this was worse, plus I had no reference at all, and this made it very hard because I had to do it all by memory or by imagination…I swear this won’t happen again ç-ç *sigh*
And yes the damask is hideous…I know..
All the following steps in this served to finish the skirt, damned folds … never again! Never in a drawing with these details and 600dpi … I’m bad and I want to learn how to put colors without having to smudge them… damn!
At this stage it soon came the blow of “you have to redesign the shitty parts you can not pretend nothing has happened “ and so it was, I redesigned the trimmings of the skirt, the jewel in the neck and earring, and I even gave the girl a facial surgery.
In this gif you can see how it changed drastically::
I do not know … I liked it before because it was my typical small woman with pointed chin and nose, but not suited to this role, especially after I had worked so much on the rest, and so here is the little woman who has made a very noticeable rhinoplasty and it has also had a chin job, a bit of filling … in addition to developing few cm of neck XD thanks to the digital tablet its all possible XD
After finishing her I had to think of the background, it was not easy backgrounds I make are always a real crap, I easily lose the proportions … but I could not leave this empty so I thought of a wild shape of Sardinia and the flag, maybe a bit of sea too…that surprisingly enough didn’t come out like shit (never drawn a better sea with 0 effort)
I drew it in a different file, then after putting the two together I added the sea and the sky only where I needed it. Later on I placed 2 grunge textures that I found here to give it a bit of roughness and then added the flowers
Et Voilà
I’ll leave here a few details I liked too
Total layers:
– 9 + 3 bg
– 3 + 2 lineart
– 27 + 1 colors
= 45 layers in total for 547 MB …
The drawing was started exactly 20 days ago!
I hope you enjoyed a bit of behind the scenes
Kisses
Maria ~♥