What’s now unmistakably a grumpy general, started as a simple copy-a-random-face-from-the-internet exercise.

I believe the reference was a particularly unloved Brazilian politician, but I can’t find it anymore so you’ll have to trust me on this.

Anyway, as it always happens when I start without a plan, the illustration evolved a lot from how it looked liked at the beginning.

After I realized that “random grumpy Internet face” could have been a grumpy general, I obviously drew an armour under his neck.
Then I thought it would have been cool if he were leading his army to battle under a crisp, blue sky.
That implied that the general would have had lots of blues on his face and armour, which forced me to paint over the original drawing a first time.

After that, the scene didn’t exactly show much. It was still little more than a Grumpy General’s portrait, not exactly a ride into battle.
So I gave the general a horse, and red banners on the background to contrast with the blue sky.

The red banners meant lots of red bounce light, however, which of course led to paint-over number two.

At last it came the army.

Then (and only then!) I realized that the composition wasn’t exacty something to write home about, so I had to move things around quite a lot before I was actually happy about it.

Long story short: I did everything the wrong way, next time I need more planning.
In my defence, I hadn’t even planned not to plan!

However, in the end I think the result is not too shabby anyway, so there you go.

Oh, I might have some colour profile issues with my Citinq.
The reds seem fine on Photoshop and on my iMac’s monitor, but they get very loud and garish when the image is rendered through Chrome. But only on the Cintiq. Go figure.

I don’t have time to investigate further right now, so if you happen to think EEEW! when you look at the banners please let me know.

by Paolo Puggioni