Commissioned Portrait of Nefertiti Magayak!
Since the commission of Marcus and Jessica went so well, I did another commission with the artist Reiesu. This character choice was none other than Princess Nefertiti Magayak of Magaya. I commissioned a portrait of her plus a colored background (flames!).
This commission process was fundamentally different than with Marcus and Jessica’s commission because I had actually drawn Nefertiti a few times in the recent and long ago past…very few times. But I had more of an idea of what she looked like than Marcus and Jessica.
Or, at least, I thought I did.
That belief fell apart quickly throughout the process, but the results were still wonderful. It just took a few more steps to get there…
WIPs
So the steps took the form of the WIP back and forth. Reiesu would send a WIP and I’d give feedback. We had 3 major WIP points, which are below:
So the first one was just the initial sketch Reiesu provided. Very good start, I thought. Loved the hair. My comments were that the blue seemed too light and it should be darker, and this nitpicky thing about the cuff length (I actually scribbled over the image to explain what I meant). Also that her skin should be darker too.
The second one was all good, but I still felt weird about the blue, but it was definitely more of the tone I was thinking of. Anyway, beyond the blue, the cuff changes were on-point and the skin was looking the proper hue. So all good!
The third one…whoa! I was so struck by the hair and the gaze (I still am). But…that blue. That blue…I felt it was like too dark still, but I was like…I don’t know what I want. I really couldn’t give much to say to adjust that as I wracked my brain and just couldn’t figure out, really, what the blue should look like. I couldn’t conceptualize the blue all that well, but I knew how it…looked somehow. I’d know it when I saw it, but I couldn’t even see it in my mind. So nothing actionable there. The only thing that was was the eyebrows since, in my mind, Magaya don’t have eyebrows (noses/ears are a whole other topic…).
And…all of that feedback brought us to…
The Final Artwork!
It all came together in something that is awesome and exudes Nefertiti. Reiesu removed the eyebrows and actually tweaked the blue again.
That final blue shade was my favorite of them by far and I am so glad it was fiddled with to that end. It might actually be pefect, I’m thinking now. I just wrote this section with Nefertiti and another character in Emerald Haze and they talked about blue…dark blue…and this actually lines up with that hue I was thinking so…it works out? I’m a fickle being.
I’ll admit, though, this portrait of Nefertiti looks different than I think of her in my mind, but in my mind, I don’t really imagine things in full fidelity. My mental images of pretty much anything is ‘fuzzy’ and hard to articulate when actually applied to reality. I don’t really see my characters with all their details inside my Neraq. I see…something sort of quasi-defined and hazy. I have to focus to get anything more, and it’s very much easier with non-Humanoids for me.
This commission process really helps me think about the finer details of my Humanoid characters and about color in general. And everything else.
As for what is next: I already know what character I am doing next, and…I am doing prep work for it! Stay tuned!
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