Lady Dimitrescu: A work in progress

As a follow up of My Dad in Sunglasses it seemed only natural to do a fully realistic portrait. I knew I needed a subject that would offer me a challenge as well as keep me interested and invested: I needed a muse. At the time the excitement surrounding the upcoming release of Resident Evil Village and the antagonist Lady Dimitrescu was not something I was immune to. I also found myself wanting to create something out of this excited energy I had so I decided to hit two birds with one stone, or as the game suggests you should aim for five crows, and do a digital painting of the 9ft vampire lady that was my muse at the time.

Official art of Lady Dimitrescu

The early stages of my process involved going through various sketch phases of trying to get her proportions right without worrying about the finer detail. It took a lot of messing around with reproportioning the line work and studying the subject but I eventually got an outline I was happy to start painting over.

Painting the subject was altogether a different beast to drawing. As I used a picture with nice dramatic lighting it was clear a lot of the subjects features would be given shape with shadows and areas of light. Its also makes you view each area as part of a whole instead of focusing on specific areas and hoping they come together: zooming out and viewing everything as part of a bigger picture helped put a lot of the finer details in perspective and helped me gain confidence that what I'm making doesn't automatically look bad. A good example of this would be painting the lips. Every attempt I made at trying to place them and paint them made them look out of place, even when I tried to trace the rough shape to get the placing correct I had issues. Eventually when I got an approximate shape and size I felt was the best I could get I decided to bite the bullet and start painting them; at first I still felt it looked out of place but as I grew more confident and continued to layer the colour, add the shading and highlights I noticed that not only did they looked good but that they really added to the whole face. As a result I am incredibly proud of how they've turned out and became confident to start painting the necklace.

Currently I have started focusing on the last major details before I am able to complete the skin. This means working on the necklace. as that's the only thing stopping me from being able to accurately place the shadowing. Much like the lips the the necklace involves a lot of trust that once it all comes together it wont look out of place or wrong. However unlike the lips working with smaller intricate parts has meant that the process has been slow and hasnt yielded results as quick as id hoped: unlike with faces and the parts on faces I haven't dealt much with drawing jewellery or accessories and as a result its been a balance of faith in my abilities and closely analysing the painting to make sure I'm on the right path.

This digital painting was a bigger under taking than I realised it would be and yet I am not disappointed about that. Every time I look at it part of me is shocked that I have managed to create something like this and even though I thought it would be finished by now I find that I'm more than happy to spend as much time on this project as I need to. It's already taught me so much about my process and my skills that I find myself genuinely proud and excited to see what I can make next and what I will learn. This is a piece I will look at in years to come and continue to be proud of and I think its important for me that I can get to a stage where I look at my work and instead of feeling that dread or cringe I feel that pride instead.