Awe-Inspiring Battles with Traditional Inks
Get Started by Creating Some Thumbnails
Any good picture begins with a hearty thumbnailing session! This is an important stage as it lets you experiment with ideas and make mistakes without investing too much time. I went into this picture with the rough idea that I wanted it to be an outdoor battle scene featuring a huge pile of figures, with lots of little duels playing out across the image. In my thumbnail sketches, you can see that I’m looking at the general shape of the composition as well as sketching out ideas for individual fights between the characters.
Draw an Initial Sketch
With this being a traditional picture, it’s essential that everything is laid out successfully early on, as it will be hard to move elements once we start painting. To help achieve this, sketch everything super loosely to begin with. This allows you to rub out and move elements around to find the best possible composition. The important thing to get across at this stage is the general pose of the figures and the space they’ll occupy.
Refine the Image
Once you’re happy with the initial sketch, head in and start adding details to the figures. We’ll be refining and adding more details later on, so the sketch doesn’t need to be super detailed or precise. The goal here is simply to have a solid framework that we can paint over.
Make a Tonal Mock-up
Scan in the sketch and use it as a base for a tonal digital sketch. With this being such a complex piece, it’s helpful to have something to aim for and refer back to while painting. This digital mock-up provides a better idea of what the finished painting will look like, while showing us where the shadows and highlights will need to be.
Prepare Your Ink
With all the details being locked in with the pen, we can put washes of watered-down ink over the top. This allows us to focus on refining the tonal aspects of the painting while keeping our details. The goal here is to suggest colour though black and white tones; elements that would be brown, red or black will appear darker and lighter-coloured elements will be paler. Looking at black and white photography here can be helpful.
Deepen the Shadows
To get the maximum level of depth in a painting, you need to use the full spectrum of values available. Until now we’ve been watering down the black ink, but here we’ll go in with pure black and place it in selective areas. It’s easy to go overboard; less is more here. After this stage, you’ll find the painting begins to pop.
Develop Background Elements
So far we’ve been focusing almost exclusively on the foreground figures, as they’re the focal point and require the most work. We want to give the impression that this scene is part of a wider vista. With super watered down ink, paint the suggestion of figures fighting in the background as well as a huge industrial structure. Try boiling down your background figures into areas of light and areas of shadow, as this will make them easier to read and quicker to render.
Add the Mid-Tones
You might be forgiven for thinking the painting looks finished at this point, but there’s one crucial stage still to be done. I mentioned earlier that these inks can be used like watercolours, but can also be used like typical acrylic paints. We’ll be painting in the mid-tones with opaque grey ink mixed from the white and the black. To achieve this, make a mixture of a big splash of grey and then adjust the exact tone depending on the area that you’re touching in on the image.
Complete the Painting
Go over the foreground elements, picking out the mid-tones with the opaque grey ink. This gives the foreground figures a pleasing physicality, which contrasts nicely with the translucently painted background. The other advantage of this is that it’s a last opportunity to adjust the highlights and tones, giving the suggestion of colour to this greyscale painting.
Conclusion
This process for painting an awe-inspiring battle scene with traditional inks involves thumbnailing, sketching, refining, and layering. It requires patience and attention to detail, but the results can be truly stunning.
FAQs
Q: What kind of ink should I use?
A: I used acrylic inks for this piece, as they are flexible and offer a huge variety of approaches.
Q: How do I achieve the mid-tones?
A: You can achieve the mid-tones by mixing opaque grey ink from the white and black inks.
Q: What is the importance of thumbnailing?
A: Thumbnailing is an important stage in the process, as it allows you to experiment with ideas and make mistakes without investing too much time.
