Art Spotlight: Edgar Allan Poe

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hello everyone my name is Dawid and I am a hobbyist artist from Poland. I have broad interests, from painting to 3D, and recently even animation. Mainly I like to create things related to pop culture, books, film and games.

The idea for the model of Edgar Allan Poe was born in my head a long time ago. I dug up my old sketches, where I have already touched on this subject.

I decided that I would do it in Blender because it is now my number one when it comes to programs for the 3D graphics. The next step was to gather references from the Internet.

Body, hair, and birds is just simple poly modeling (there’s no magic, just moving vertices and a lot of time :D ) I would like at this point to draw attention to not be a slave to references. If it seems to us that the model may look a little better if you go deviate from the original, do so.

The head was made of a simple sphere in sculpt mode because it is easier to experiment with form.

I knew that the whole model will be based on the painted textures so we’ll focus more on that today. Sculpting, retopology, and UV mapping was a quick process. I try to do it as quickly as possible and not stress over correct topology or placement of seams as it would be a waste of time since it’ll be painted over. On the internet you can find many guides how to do it correctly :D

Therefore, let’s get to the most interesting step which is the texture painting. I will not describe how to set the Blender to paint, because there are plenty of YouTube tutorials on the basics of it, but I would however offer some guidelines concerning the painting and composition.

Personally, I’m not baking any light or AO maps, because I don’t like to be limited in any way. Painting from scratch gives you a more “imperfect” or artistic effect. What’s most important is the choice of the right light.

In this case the light is from the front and above (in some places faked in order to better illustrate the forms).

Throughout the process, it is important to pay attention to the contrast because our brain works so that it directs our gaze where it is the highest. In this case, it is around the face and eyes. You should learn the rules of composition and design to better understand what’s going on. Excellent for this purpose is to analyze paintings of old masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens, or my favorite, Caravaggio.

The last stage is “polishing”, solely done on Sketchfab. Very helpful was the post-processing effects such as bloom, contrast, adding sharpness or noise. Sometimes you can really change the character of the model by manipulating the appropriate settings. It is worth spending at this stage a little longer and experiment.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone for the positive feedback and comments. If you want more painted textures, stay tuned to my profile here on Sketchfab.

Thanks for reading this short text. Cheers and have a nice day.

Short and sweet! Thanks, Dawid. Any awesome examples of hand painted textures you want to share? Questions? Put them down below!