Scifi book character portrait - Mira
I love working with authors and gamers doing character portraits. Each one has something special about them and Mira was the first scifi character I got to paint that wasn’t one of my own.
Author Paul Grover described her as being soldier, emotionally and physically scarred in a run down, rusty space opera. Apart from her dark hair, green eyes, and angular features, the most significant feature was the damage to her face. I was given a lot of information to work from, but still a lot of freedom.
Because we settled on a face on portrait, I went straight to the line art and did up two versions. She wears a beaten up leather jacket over her blue ship suit, but I thought that it hid some of the details such as the flags so I proposed a slightly different version without the jacket. The client decided to go without the jacket and left the background up to me - which I wanted to hint at space, but make it a little more painterly and rough.
Sketch and colour concepts for Mira
Mira - the final portrait