my first commission

okay my first commission i did a while back for a friend. i'm hoping to do more in the future. obviously because it was my first commission i wanted to live up to the commissioners expectations which lead to a lot of sketches and research been done. the subject matter was his character from World of Warcraft a female Tauren. i had never drawn one before which made me nervous. the other day i was scanning all my sketches from my sketch book and came across a few pieces i did at the time for practice and planning. i thought it would be cool to post them up with the finished piece.

the first is one i did when i first was asked for a commission, this commission didn't have many guidelines which i'm very grateful for as it let me develop at the same time other then the drawing is of a tauren. i tried to draw the head of a tauren first to figure out if i could do this.

by the time i had finished drawing this picture i was fairly confident that i could draw a tauren with some practice and some references so i booted up Warcraft and made a female tauren in the same colours of bite, the character i was drawing and took some screen shots. i also noted down that she had green eyes as this was a characteristic that the commissioner had mentioned about his character.

i decided that i would draw a full body shot, because it was more true to my illustration this lead to me having to ask a few questions about what the commissioner wanted the character to wear. he decided on the brew fest dress and so i went with it. the brew fest dress in my eyes was a good choice because unlike the top raid armour sets that are contently replaced. holiday clothing tends to be used yearly. i myself play Warcraft and really like the brewfest dress though at the time i didn't have it.

after drawing these simple drawings i showed these to the commissioner as i wanted to see if there was any changes to be made. the major one that stood out was that her chin didn't look right and that her horns where white not black. so these changes where noted down to be made.

i drew a head shot of my character around the time as i wanted to practice digital art and wanted to practice drawing tauren. this was an couple of hours work in open canvas while i figure out pose and background.

i knew the commissioner's favorite place in Warcraft at the time was Nagrand as we were in the same guild. this lead to me actually picking a beautiful spot within the game to use as a background and lead to this rough sketch the large oval scribble is where the character would be placed.

from this sketch i drew the sketch and line art for the piece and began colouring. i kicked myself because i forgot to confirm the sketch for any changes that needed to be done.

one thing that came up was the nose area, in open canvas i sketched the changes that needed to be make and got them confirmed

i did my best to change the nose however the line art and the fact it had been coloured made this difficult. i learned something from it though and get the pencils confirmed before you ink and colour. shame i hate my pencil work so much. i finished up the background and made it look like she wasn't floating.

overall i was happy with the final image. and while i have received some criticism on this picture, i'm still very proud of the piece. i was especially pleased with how successful my foreshortening turned out since i hadn't used it before.

obviously i have realised that i did to much prep work for it which i wouldn't normally do and realise i need to be more confident in my abilities, that and draw other things but humans. which i'm planning to start doing this year.

while on the subject of world of Warcraft art here's the back of a moonkin i sketched in my sketch book. i love my balance druid <3

happy drawing/writing/whatever you guys do

haggis