Chosen Hero Fan Art of Link From the Legend of Zelda [Process Drawing]

jamesartville (62)in #art • 5 years ago

I don't usually post my artwork from my college days and earlier, but there are a few that have aged well. This is still one of my favorite and more popular drawings of Link from the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I illustrated this one in 2008 using the Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet and a combination of Corel Painter Essentials and Adobe Photoshop. Since this was so long ago, I don't have all of the stages saved, but I did keep the line art.

The Line Art

I actually drew this one using a screenshot reference that I made using the snapshot mode in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Yes, this is the Bridge of Eldin stage and Link is using his down aerial attack. I was a bigger fan of using Corel rather than Adobe for the line art as Adobe had yet to implement a smoothing functionality and their brushes didn't have the variable width as well as Corel did when applying more or less pressure on the pen.

The Finished Illustration

The coloring on this one was entirely Photoshop. I used the polygon lasso tool to create shapes for the colors and shadows. The cel-style shading was easy enough but I took a step further by adding a lot of gradients to both the shadow and light areas. I even colored the line art, something that I think I went a little too overboard on this one but I was still playing around with proper color holds.

Blurring the castle in the background was a good move, but I probably should have applied a lesser blur to the tree line as well. Perhaps this one would be a good candidate for a redraw, especially since now I am noticing so many things that could be improved. But alas, that's why looking back at old artwork can be so educational.

Prints for Sale

I recently launched prints for sale on my website featuring many of my drawings, both original and fan art. I have them available in three different sizes: