“Don’t Listen” | Corveil Portrait: February 19, 2025

Edit: March 2, 2025

Moved all the edits log to the end of this post to make the post read more easily. :)

Original post below:

Here’s an illustration where the original sketch was from a long time ago – November 2023, in fact! I’ll add a crop of that version at the end of this post.

This painting has a loose idea behind it, but it is primarily meant as one of the front portraits I seem to do of my characters every now and again. I believe with this one, the initial drive was to paint Corveil’s current design, which I had been tweaking here and there at the time. He originally had hair on the darker side, which I decided to change because too many of my characters were looking similar. I tried him with much lighter hair for a while, which I thought worked better for him, but didn’t completely fit.

For a bit now, I’ve been drawing him with something in-between – still fairly light, but a more warm grey or ashy, light brown. Though it’s probably not noticeable in this piece, specifically, since I did add more shadows for contrast. Haha.

I have a few alternate and earlier versions of this one I’m still considering, which I’ll add below:

This is also an even earlier version, before I added more contrast. I sort of like the softer look here.

The initial idea and some additional thoughts in the full post below:

Here’s an in-progress crop I had saved at the time during the initial idea, in November 2023 (on the 17th, apparently):

I tried to pick it up a few times since then, but I wasn’t happy with how it was progressing. I have a few more progress step saved, but I’m very not fond of how they look, and I think I’ll keep those out of this post, at least for now. I randomly had the urge to try picking at it again this week, and to my surprise, this attempt seems to be much more coherent than the last times I tried working on it.

I can’t quite recall my last attempt to bring this one to a place I wasn’t so dissatisfied with, but it was several months ago – probably in early-ish 2024. It looked very different from both the above crop and the “final” versions at the top of this post, because I was still figuring out how I wanted Corveil’s face to look. I was in-between which sort of stylization I wanted to use, as well as his perceived age was fluctuating too much when I was drawing him before. I think I’ve finally settled on a somewhat more consistent visual look for him (the previous post being probably closest to how he’s meant to appear), though his look will probably continue fluctuating a bit more until I’ve drawn his current design more consistently. 

Edit: February 20, 2025

Added a few more refinements to the painting the day after! Decided to go with the version without the red, after comparing both a bit more. I think this might be the final version of it.

Edit: February 26, 2025

Made a few final tweaks! Think this Corveil portrait is finished now. :)

Edit: March 1, 2025

I seem to enjoy tweaking this one, haha – hopefully this should be the final version! I strengthened some edges that needed definition, and added a few more warmer tones to Corveil’s face.

I’ll add the previous Feb 26 version here, mainly for comparison for myself:

March 2, 2025:

The (hopefully) final adjustment! Looking at the March 1 version again, I thought it lost some of what I liked about the original from Feb 19th. Combined parts of the earlier and more recent refinements, as I thought the previous version was looking a little overworked. Tried to combine the best of all worlds!

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