I've always been a huge Warhammer 40k fanatic and I think it's important to get back to your roots every now and again. I decided to do a homebrew chapter for Kenton Kilgore's
Fighting Tigers of Veda rather than a codex one, though this drawing could fairly easily convert over thanks to the magic of vector.
Over the course of 11 days I took a piece from concept to completed image, which I've shared below. I included some notes for those who are also interested in drawing marines. I do all my work in Adobe Illustrator CS6.
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| Day 1: I sketched out the general pose I was looking for. I knew that I wanted to do a devastator, so I blocked out an area for the gun on his shoulder. More on that later. |
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| Day 2: I put down some placeholders for the "soft" armor and drew out the gun at the angle I wanted it. I highly recommend grabbing your camera and photographing an actual model for reference. Though I didn't trace the photo, it was a fantastic asset in this task. At this point I noticed the top of the gun didn't really support the "over the shoulder" pose I had originally envisioned, so I had him heft it upright. |
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| Day 3: Leg and arm plates were added as well as the beginnings of the torso armor. For those wondering where the fuse came from, a friend of mine saw the image on day 2 and claimed it couldn't be a plasma cannon because there was no fuse. I corrected for this on Day 3, we had a good laugh about it, and moved on. |
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| Day 4: More detail on the legs and torso, and added power cables for the cannon. |
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| Day 5: My old nemesis: hands. In this case I was very fortunate to find a close-up shot of some space marine hands that someone was working on. Again, these images served as invaluable references for the rest of the piece. |
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| Day 6: I added the helmet and armor details, as well as finishing the backpack and throwing on the main logo. |
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| Day 7: Probably the biggest number of changes. I bought the gun down and repositioned the hands. The problem I had with the gun up was that it didn't look right. Even a space marine shouldn't be able to heft a plasma cannon one-handed. Having the gun low and held in both hands gives it a lot of visual weight that it was lacking before. I also resized the shoulder pads and legs, which were undersized relative to the rest of the body to begin with. Finally, I added in line-variations to give it more interest. |
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| Day 8: Added the signature stripes for the Tigers marine chapter, and swapped the chest icon for a more generic skull-eagle. The tribal wing design goes well with the tiger stripes, unifying the armor. I also added some Bengali script for the word "fire". |
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| Day 9: Color and shadow, reintroducing the logo in the background. |
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| Day 10: Glow effects for the plasma cannon and eyes. |
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| Day 11: I wrapped things up with a round of highlights, darkening the armor to make it less of a charcoal color. I added in black-line shading for the metallic areas for extra contrast, and set the marine against a colored background for contrast. |
All in all a fun little project with a great outcome. Next week we'll be doing another step-by-step, but this time for blood bowl!
