You're our MVP, Mike.

I definitely got a little experimental with this one, but I think it paid off. I had been watching digital paint tutorials and noticed a lot of artists had this sort of square brush that I didn't, so I managed to replicate it sort of by changing some settings in krita. Anyways, I was really quick and messy with the initial strokes, just mainly trying to get the form down without undoing too much. It was fun not getting too bogged down in details, as I tend to do that with my other pieces. I really tried to keep a good pace with this one.

I think the face itself is alright. I didn't use a reference, so it kind of looks strange in some places. Also, I didn't really put that much effort into the teeth, so they look kind of bad and out of place. The shading method I employed was strange, and a first for me. I essentially just shaded with the same brush I had been painting with, and then covered small parts of the shaded area with the base color, to make the strokes feel more jagged and less clean so that it would look more like mottled flesh. I think it turned out okay.

I used a lot of effects and filters on this one. I upped the saturation first, then applied a posterize filter, then palletized it, then added some dithering just because. I played around for a while until I settled on these effects. I like most of it, although I think the dithering might have been a bit much. It also leads to crazy compression and just makes the image look weird all around. Will probably avoid that in the future. Also, I do like how that text came out on the side, it helps fill in space and makes the whole piece feel a little more complete. Overall, this was a pretty fun piece to make, and I think it was a pretty successful experiment. I learned some more about what works and what doesn't, which is always helpful. If I were to make this piece again, I'd definitely use a reference and fix the teeth, and avoid using that dithering filter.

This drawing took around 1 hour 20 minutes.