General Iroh is the son of Fire Lord Izumi and grandson of Lord Zuko, and is a supporting character in the world of Avatar. There isn’t much fanart around him so I thought I would give it a go.
The fist illustration depicts the United Forces battleships. I wanted to draw the scene of his arrival in Republic City during Amon’s assault. The scene is covered with dense morning fog and I thought it would be a great opportunity to paint that atmospheric effect. I’ve been practicing my backgrounds lately and I think I did pretty well here. It’s a simple side profile composition, as I didn’t want to do something too advanced for now. The main focus was improving my values and getting the local colours right. I gained more confidence using darker occlusion shadows in from doing this peice.
The man himself was up next. Overlooking his position, Iroh looks ready for action. Like previous, the main focus was values and lighting under foggy conditions. The firebending adds a little more oomph to the otherwise dull colours. The real challenge was getting his face right for my realistic interpretation of him. Hopefully I made him look cool and handsome enough.
Recently I have been incorporating textured brushes to add more brush variety. Some artist overly blend and render all the surfaces that do not need to be smooth. The skin and other smooth surfaces should be blended, however rough and textured surfaces should not. Using textured brushes and deliberately showing your brushwork (to contrast smooth surfaces) is one way to add variety and complexity to an artwork.
The final result….
