Clip Studio Paint - PAINT CULTURALLY INSPIRED FANTASY CHARACTER ART

Comic artist Ann Maulina talks us through the creation of a portrait made for her Raruurien universe

- Ann Maulina

This portrait is part of an illustration series called Fancy Hats. It’s a personal project where I focus on showcasing various headdress designs from seven different fantasy tribes within the universe of Raruurien, my original webcomic.

Each tribe was inspired by different ethnic groups. This particular piece was inspired by the Miao, an ethnic group from China and Southeast Asia.

My illustration works are mostly visual storytelling, with characters interacting with each other or their environments. Drawing portraits gives me interesting challenges, where I have to pay more attention to a character’s expressions, facial features, and the details of accessories and outfits. In this workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating this portrait and overcoming those challenges.

I have a consistent style in my drawings, but I’m quite flexible in the process. I think it’s due to how heavily I invest in my preparation. The pre-production phase consists of concepting, thumbnailing, and making a colour scheme. The result is a coloured sketch where I can see quite clearly how the drawing will look once it’s finished.

It’s like having a clear goal and blueprint ready to be worked on in the beginning. As long as I have that clear goal in my mind, I can use any different kind of method in the drawing and rendering process.

1 Create a concept

The character I’m going to draw is from the Tiger tribe, which lives deep in a tropical rainforest. I’ve done a design of a character from the same tribe before, so I didn’t have to start from scratch when it came to this one.