Back during 2019 I attempted to participate (again) in the infamous Inktober. I don't recall if I using any specific prompt list, combined several prompts lists into one, or created my own. Either way, grimoire was one of the first prompts I decided to create a drawing for.
At the time, my realistic drawing skills were pretty decent. Well decent enough to have the confidence to draw my own hand and imagine the rest of the image rather than using reference photos. I had also found the courage to break out my pearlescent and simmery metal water color paints.
5 years later, I'm looking for an old sketch for an old art idea to revisit, and come across this piece again. Almost immediately, I begin picking out how some of the line work is rushed, and the sizing of the items surrounding the hand are, as well as some of my choices of where I applied the shimmery paint. Despite all that, I still really liked the idea behind it.
Instead of finding my old sketch, I decided to bring new life to this old piece. I started by scanning the page in my sketchbook and taking it into my program of choice, Clip Studio Paint.
I've included a timelapse video of the changes I made in CSP. so you can watch it since many of the changes are small.
Re-Mapping the Composition
Using the lasso tool, I started with cutting the individual elements and resizing them to my typical canvas size. In doing so, I found that some pieces looked better in a slightly different location than they originally were.
Blending in the Edges
Here is when I started to work on each element separately rather than all at one. Since the original drawing was in a sketchbook with slightly toned paper, when I cut apart the piece the new canvas behind it made the lassoed edges very prominent. To fix that, I took the eraser tool and cleaned up the edges, and in the process cut some of the rushed linework I did for shadows.
Re-doing Some Line Art
When I had scanned the sketchbook page, some of the scan was blurry, due to how old an worn out the sketchbook had gotten over time. You can see that the dagger and the grimoire itself look sharper in the image below than in the one above. I also had to extend some of the line art as well. I had to extend the upper left of the grimoire, and extend the lines of the arm and draw in the rest of the bracelet.
Final Touches
Contempt with the changes made, I decided to export and order prints. I still wanted to incorporate the original choice of using shimmery paint, so instead of bringing color back into the piece digitally, I decided that I would hand embellish each print, making each one unique.
I happened to remember to record the hand embellishing, so you can see the process and end results.
In Conclusion
I'm really glad I came upon this piece again and decided to make the quick little changes that I did. After 5 years of growing my skills I could see what I could improve. The changes made ended up making the new version even better than the original, and I was able to make each print unique in a more traditional art way.
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