Painting the Cybergil

Click to enlarge

For starters I have to say Massive THANKS go to "LipsSewnShut" at DEVIANT ART for providing the original reference image, very kind of her indeed!! Soon as I saw the pic I had the idea of making her into a Cyborg and mixing the mechanical and biological elements...Read on to see the process!!

Click to enlarge

First thing I did was to clean up the face a little. This was done using a large soft Airbrush and using ALT to pick colors from various areas of the skin and then lightly painting over them. Also on a NEW LAYER above I started blocking in the metal areas with gray and black, just scribbles really trying to figure out the form and what stuff goes where. During this process "things" start to pop out to me like a panel line would look good there or this is where the joints will be etc and stuff tends to suggest itself somehow ;-) I also created another NEW LAYER and roughed in some hair over the original as I want to make it slightly shinier and also control where it falls...

Click to enlarge

Then I started in there with various sized brushes and the DODGE n BURN tool to basically get the light source in there from above and the left, I try to imagine where the light would strike each part and where it wouldn't ;-) I also start using a harder edged brush to define edges and generally tighten things up and by that I mean tidy up my initial scribbly lines etc. I also had an idea at this stage that the foreground would be cool if I made it a landscape... suggesting she is very large but as I haven't painted any further yet you'll find out if I do or not by reading on...

Click to enlarge

At this point I felt it needed a little more so I extended the left side of the canvas and painted in a severed arm socket and the suggestion of other stuff in her upper torso. I also pasted in a dirty metal photo set it layer setting to OVERLAY and dropped the opacity to about 30% to add that extra bit of dirt n grime. I like to get it in there at an early stage as when things start getting more detailed from now on the texture suggests ideas of its own... weird I know ;-)

Click to enlarge

OK I wanted a bit of reflection in the arm so I copied the face and flipped it horizontally as shown and the red line kinda represents the symmetry line. I then set the layer to OVERLAY and about 50% and using the eraser blended out the edges. I also added a few red blobs with the AIRBRUSH where I thought it might be reflecting it a bit and smudged the reflection on the arm a bit to suit the form better.

Click to enlarge

Also on the fingers I added some red blobs with the AIRBRUSH on the OVERLAY layer to help it seem like the metal was reflecting the hair too, this is fairly basic at the moment and will be refined further once I start getting into more detail...

Click to enlarge

The Hair was done with the AIRBRUSH and very small brushes, basically I went through with black and tried to divide the hair up into clumps so to speak as it does tend to join together then within these I go in with an even smaller AIRBRUSH and put in dark lines and highlights to bring them out, basically LOTS of line drawing and trying to follow the flow of the hair. I also used the Smudge tool to blend out the ends and also blend various parts of the hair together...it still needs a little more work but its more or less there!!

Here's a little close up of the end of the severed arm, I added various little highlights and details and trailed a couple of pipes out of there, also added some black patches on the ground with sharp white highlights to make it look like spilt oil, anyway were almost done...

Click to enlarge

That's about it I reckon. I added some texture to the floor using the OVERLAY setting again and dropping it down to 50% and small bits of grit were painted on along with various highlights throughout the picture to help make some stuff "pop" out a little more!! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and once again thanks to "LipsSewnShut" at DEVIANT ART