Inspiration
Today I’ll be talking about how I created Spider for the 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge. For my version of spider, I went with a Japanese inspired Jorōgumo.
The Jorōgumo is a mythological creature from Japanese folklore which was known for luring virile young men to their lairs, charming them with food and music, then binding them up in their webbing so they could devour them.
Jorōgumo means “binding bride” or “whore spider”, but is also a word which refers to a particular species of golden orb weaver spiders in Japan. For more info on this fascinating folklore, check out www.yokai.com
Tools and Techniques
For this painting, I used Photoshop CC and a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.
Concept Inspiration
I took a lot of visual inspiration from the golden orb weaver (nephila clavata) of Japan. My Spider has many of the same markings as decorative designs on her kimono and her color palette echoes the spider’s. Her kimono is also inspired by a bride’s as a nod to the “binding bride” namesake.
References
A selection from my references. I had many more of the spider from multiple angles, but I’ll save you the nightmare fodder!
Process
Phase 1 – I doodled a rough sketch in turquoise to make it easier to see when I inked on top.
Phase 2 – Line art created with a hard round brush.
Phase 3 – I laid in flat colors using the selection magic wand to select areas and Edit>Fill.
Phase 4 – A shadow layer set to Multiply was created that was clipped as a mask to the entire Group of colors.
Phase 5 – A final touch of highlights was added with white. The highlight layer set to Overlay.
Animated process GIF.
You can also watch a sped up time lapse video of the process here.
For more in-depth instruction on how I created this image plus a downloadable PSD of the image, Pledge $10 and up on my Patreon to gain access to the narrated video tutorial! You can also buy the individual tutorial separately at my Gumroad shop, but you won’t receive the extra art goodies you would by purchasing via Patreon.
You can watch a preview of the narrated tutorial here: