[A Fortune Teller]

Today I will be going through one of my other digital drawings.

As you may have noticed by now that I’m very fond of animals. Most of my subjects are animals. One of the things I do the most is to think of a way to combine animals with images and turn animals into the centre of a story. When I begin to plan on a new project, I either think of an animal I like to portrait first and then find it a matching scene or I will think of a scenario and then come up with an animal that I think fit the best. For this piece, I thought about drawing a fortune teller first. I had a few specific things in mind to put in the image, namely a crystal ball, some tarot cards, some books, some crystals and a really nice candle holder. I pictured an animal sitting in the middle of the room surrounded by these objects. I quickly searched for materials online meanwhile considering what animals would be a perfect fit for this drawing. When thinking of a fortune teller, I thought of someone being a bit mysterious, perhaps sophisticated and having a pair of beautiful eyes that stare into your soul. It’s really a no brainer. The subject for this piece shall be a fox. When speaking of foxes, I happen to know a very beautiful fox from Instagram, her name is Juniper. You can check her account(click me) and see more of her pictures if you like. Juniper has such a wonderful smile so I decided to use her as my model and reference for the fox’s face.

With the above mentioned things in mind, I began to work on the outline of my drawing. Let’s take a look at it.

 

Again, the fox didn’t really look like a fox without its fur and coloration. For this fox’s face, I used 9 layers to render the coloration and the pattern of her fur.

 

After finishing colouring the face, I moved on to colour the crystals, the crystal ball, the candle holder, the tarot cards, a cup and a saucer for tea leaf reading, some books and a skull. When I was searching for related images of a fortune teller I found this interesting “Cup of Destiny.” Obviously it’s designed for reading leaves(or coffee grounds) and telling something about your future. However I can’t help thinking that if someone is a legit fortune teller, this person shouldn’t really need a cup and a saucer with instructions and hints. The cup helps to make predictions so I guess it’s for recreational use. It’s like if you want to have some fun reading fortune with friends and families you can try this cup. Nah maybe I’m being too judgemental, maybe it’s just some kind of tool. Anyways because the design of the cup and saucer was interesting and special so I decided to include them into the drawing.

 

After I coloured all the objects on the table, I then moved onto colouring the fox’s outfit. This picture below shows subtle detail I added on the sleeves and the floral pattern. The detail may not be very obvious but I do think it gives a tiny bit more depth to the drawing itself.

 

With the completion of colouring all the objects in the drawing, I began to colour the table, the background and then added some more shading and lighting to the image.

 

Now most work was done except for one thing and that was to unify the tone or say the atmosphere of the image. Therefore I added a light brown filter and adjusted the exposure and saturation of the image. I also highlighted the centre of the image so the subject could seem more prominent. The following picture is a comparison before and after I made those above-mentioned adjustments.

 

One more thing before I wrap up this article. I had so much fun drawing those crystals so the next day I finished this piece I drew some more crystals! Haha. Simply for the fun of drawing them.

 

Now let’s get back on topic which is our fortune teller here. This is the final piece. My mom says the picture looks a bit creepy. Judging from the nature of the topic of this drawing, I supposed it is a compliment? Haha.

 

 

If you want to have a better look at this piece, you can click here. I hope you do enjoy this article as well as my drawing today. Leave a comment below if you have any thoughts on this piece. If you like my art work and would love to learn more about me, please read this article.

Have a nice one, cheers! 🤗

Till next time.

I- Shan.