Creating Iconic Art

I’ve recently started minting NFTs. Before settling on this lovely project you see here before you, I did some research on popular NFTs to see what kind of art I should be doing. I decided that portraits with a common theme would be a good project. I decided to create the “Leaders of Fiction” collection. A collection of iconic historical, and political characters mashed up with science fiction character types is an interesting theme that will get people excited to buy my artwork.

Today I want to dive into my artistic process and write this short blog on how I crafted this piece

Step One: the Outline

I’m gonna talk about cheating here. Digital art makes it super easy to cheat and take measurements. One of the important aspects of capturing a likeness is proper measurements of facial features. Overlaying the drawing on top of a picture of Stalin made it really easy to measure and mark the distance between his features. Another big help in capturing Stalin’s likeness is the mustache, that thing is a dead giveaway. Taking proper measurements, and outlining your drawings to measure shape, and anatomy is incredibly important

Step two: Pencils

The pencils are the foundation of the art piece. This is where the artist decides how to stylize his drawing and makes most of the decisions about the piece. The robotic design on Stalin was fully designed in this stage of the drawing process. The pencil stage is where you can really show forth your creativity. However, for a highly stylized piece such as this, it’s important to use strong geometric shapes to create a strong silhouette for the drawing.

Step 3: Inks

I’m gonna be honest, I went way off-book on this one. Notice how the brush style is different on the robotic part of the drawing. I did this because when inking it’s important to determine a style. Because Stalin is a classic Soviet Icon, I thought the rough, grainy texture would clash well will the hard edges of the robotic section. Most people believe inking is just tracing pencils. But inking is a very expressive part of the artistic process. The line weight and placement, along with crosshatching and rendering is an integral part of giving the piece depth.

Step Four: Flats

This part is a lot harder than it looks. Color selection is not my strong suit. But I do have lots of practice. I wanted to use drab colors and red and yellow to really convey the Soviet theme of the piece.

When choosing your flat colors it’s important to use colors you can build upon. Using colors that are too dark or too light can make it difficult to render your piece. Harsh colors can make shading muddy and confuse the piece.

Final Step: Rendering

For this collection, I wanted the rendering to be simple, and reminiscent of an animated cartoon. Keeping it simple allows the piece to have a strong sense of depth while staying simple. To shade a piece it’s important to know the light source of the piece and any areas a shadow might fall. Placing the light on the left side of the piece is a tried and true style. The shaded areas of the face do a good job of showing the facial anatomy of the subject.

Applying the steps

Every drawing I create follows these steps. Art is all about creativity, however, it’s important to give structure to the drawings. Iconic art is supposed to leave a lasting impression, it has to be recognizable. Art without structure creates sloppy proportions and muddy colors. Having a structured approach to your artwork can greatly improve your pieces. If you keep practicing and pay attention to your proportions your art will see constant improvement.