The market
Click the picture to enlarge to full resolution (5689x3200px), should be enough for a wallpaper :-)
This illustration might become the first panel for my next episode. I took the time to explore and work on my "brushwork". I also had plenty of concept-art to do on this new location and for imagining clothes. It was difficult because I wanted to capture a specific mood and lighting I had in mind.
I wanted a strong key light; but not falling into a chiaroscuro setup with too hard shadows, so I decided to fill the shadows with an over exagerated light bouncing (or radiosity/indirect-lighting). I also put a large cold top ambiant light (sky box?), more something seen in modern movie set and CG animation. I also got a lot of color variation from the top key light filtered by the big piece of drapery that shade the street. I could this way place saturated mandarin orange and lime green colors; and make more light bouncing.
All in all, I put a lot of work into the light ...and I like this game!
Source/Krita file: https://www.peppercarrot.com/fr/viewer/artworks-src__2022-02-21_The-market_by-David-Revoy.html
But I'm not fully happy with the workflow I used for this piece; I could invest a little bit more time into the part where I started to block volumes in black and white, just after the thumbnails and before recoloring (I used mostly the 'Overlay' blending mode, btw). I probably could save half time if I planned the artwork a bit better. But that's the charm of also exploring.
Video timelapse:
- Peertube: https://peertube.touhoppai.moe/w/pzremzzBEGtLEQe6idt2CB
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/HctINVnEMx0
Here is also an accelerated timelapse of the screen recording captures while making this digital painting illustration with the software Krita 5.0.2 on Kubuntu Linux. The video is 2min43 long but the original time was around 15h and it was painted on a Intuos 4 XL.
Krita 5.0.2 (appimage) is incredibly reliable and stable here. A real pleasure to paint with it, make brushes and experiment. I started to test Krita 5 in September, and this version is "day and night" compare to all the previous version I beta-tested during episode 36 of Pepper&Carrot.
9 comments
Wow, this looks amazing. These popping colours and the varying degree of details. Love the camera positioning as well.
This is beautiful and evocative.
Joli, le décor d'inspiration orientale.
C'est pas souvent qu'on la voit porter d'autres vêtements.
hâte de voir la suite...
I like Pepper in this new outfit, is gorgeous, and carrot in the basquet is adorable, but i dont like the green tone in her skin is horrible, the skin of Pepper is totaly diferent, more like the girl in the right in the picture. Overall this image is great and would be great seen Pepper using this in the comics.
A bit of the feel of this old painting, which has really excellent lighting:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Frederick_Lewis_004.jpg
Actually, the Forsythia painting has excellent lighting.
Thanks for the link, excellent lighting and amazing piece. That's one I'm curious to see IRL now, I read the piece is in the musuem of Manchester. I'll investigate and learn from John Frederick Lewis, with this painting, it looks like we share similar pictural taste. Thanks for Forsythia too!
Thanks for your feedback and for the critic, I'll do my best to improve.
Glad you found it interesting! That painting is a subscene from an earlier larger piece; the older work has better figure drawing, facial expresssion, and composition, but the lighting isn't as good. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Armenian_Lady_in_Cairo.jpg
If you scroll to the "Categoires:" box at the bottom of that page, and follow follow the "John Frederick Lewis" link, you'll get all of the Wikimedia Commons works by him (sorry, I don't know how familiar you are with the website). If you CTRL-F "Bazaar", you will find multiple paintings of covered markets like the one in the background of your picture. The paintings are better light reference images than the photos of covered markets, in that the human eye sees that wide luminosity range very differently from how a camera sees it. The subcategory link "Illustrations of Constantinople made during a Residence in that City in the Years 1835-6 (1838)" at the top of the category page also has lots of very architectural cityscapes which you might like; they look to have been roughly sketched from life, then finished in-studio.
JFL is one of the most tolerable orientalist painters; he tended to draw what he saw, not what he fantasized, and he avoided using reluctant models. The settings in his paintings were drawn from life, and if the people look like Victorians gleefully playing dress-up in Turkish clothes, that's because that's what they were. Compare to, say, Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose models (especially the female ones) often look both characterless and really unhappy, and assorted other painters who did not bother with research.
Pepper seems to be wearing a wrap-front particoloured top (or a top and a light blanket or shawl tied over it), loose breeches bloused at the knee, puttees, and low shoes (clogs?) with a vaguely Korean-style curled toe. She also has a sash, a cylindrical container suspended from it, and a basketwork backpack. This seems to say "hot, damp climate", especially the neckline and puttees; that matches the vegetation, too. The clothes seem to fit her active, practical, self-confident character well, better than the schnicksnacky and rather motion-inhibiting clothes she usually wears. But that is of course a somewhat culture-specific judgement, YMMV.
If you want more lighting interest in a covered market, some real-world ones have stained glass. It lets in less warmth for a given level of useful illumination, since some wavelengths heat the coloured glass far above, rather than the market interior. Awnings across uncovered market streets probably became much more common when industrialized cloth production made them cheaper. They may be very open-weave, like the shadecloth you'd find in a garden store, to let wind through, but in a rainy climate they may be waterproof cotton canvas. But trees are even better, they shade and cool by transpiration.
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