Nicki Minaj painting

in drawing •  7 years ago 

nicki.png
Tonight I was totally exhausted from studying, and decided to draw a little something, just to chill a little.
The picture started as a VERY chibifized version of cartoon Harley Quinn ( XD ), then I started playing around with the sketch, changing it little by little... And finally I realised it no longer resembles anything like Harley. Looking at the figure I saw Nicki - those wide hips, you know.
After finishing the sketch I felt no longer like doing lines. Plus - I never draw humans, I'm the kind of animal artist. The lines were a no-no for me for drawing a human, but painting sound sooo time consuming and hard... I actually made a digital painting once before (it was a dog, and it took over 20 hours total. And it's still not finished x_x), but escaping the comfort zone is the thing I need to push myself to do more often.

That's when I decided. A painting. Of a human. A living human.

I was nicely surprised, because this took only like one and half and hour total (including goofing around with sketch), and the painting process was relaxing on it's own.

I chose Nicki Minaj look from the music video 'Swish swish' with Katy Perry.
I saved some steps to show how I figured this thing out C:

01.png
Finished, cleaned sketch. I decided this to be my first step, as there were too many 'working sketches' to mention them.
It's rough and basic, but gives the idea of the picture.

002.png
Now I added blobs of solid colors, so I could remove the distracting sketch layer. Also added some basic swatches on the right. They help A LOT during the process.

02.png
A pretty big jump here lol
At this point I had face and skin shaded. I KNOW HER FACE DOESN'T RESEMBLE NICKI. I tried. I failed. End of story ._.
And just to point it here - I had no idea what I was doing there. It's just some random paint strokes I made to make it look hooman-ish or something.

03.png
Oh the fun part. Hair. I was so glad I made the hair as a color blob on another layer. Oh so glad was I /Yoda mode off/
I could have spent some more time on this part, but I got lazy, bruh.

04.png
The latex part! It was fun, I love the look of latex.
Just kidding. I had no idea how light works on this. I made a lot of screenshots from the video just to learn how the light bounces on Nicki's thighs. I'm still not sure I understand, but I looked OK.

nicki.png
I added some simple shadow behind the figure to not leave everything blank. And that's all. That's the whole step.
Oh, and I added some kind of signature (I guess? lol) at the final picture, resized it and voila!

If you'd like to criticize this piece or give me some tips for futre - GO AHEAD. I'm total newbie when it comes to this kind of art, but it was really fun!

Do you want to suggest any other celeb for me to draw in this style?

Katy Perry - Swish swish ft. Nicki Minaj

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!