Hakuryuu Ren

When I painted the Belial piece I wasn’t intending to do any others, but once I’d done one Djinn Equip form it only made sense to do the other and after both of those were completed I wanted to ‘complete the set’ by painting Hakuryuu as himself too. If you haven’t seen the other two pieces, Belial can be found here, and Zagan here.

Something I was reminded of having done all three pieces in such close succession was just how much the Djinn transformations in Magi change the character’s appearance! Based on appearance alone, this piece and the two previous ones look like they could be three completely separate characters!

This piece presented an interesting challenge in trying to find an effective way to depict Hakuryuu’s burn scars. Although I have painted him before, I always struggled with it in the past and was never quite satisfied with the results. This time I found it much easier, and I think the way I used to work on lots of separate layers made it difficult to get the transition between the scar and the rest of his skin to look natural. Working on a single layer means it is a lot easier to achieve as the brush naturally blends into itself. I also used a more textured ‘crayon’ effect brush on this series of paintings which I felt generally helped parts of the painting which were ‘closer to the camera’ look less flat but was especially helpful for creating the scar texture.

This painting is a bit different to the previous two in the sense that it was done entirely digitally rather than from a traditional sketch. Since I knew I wanted to paint it digitally from the beginning, there was no point adding the extra steps of starting on paper.

I have really enjoyed working on these ‘simpler’ paintings where I can focus on the details of the character’s appearance rather than the larger scenes I usually do. For a while I had tended to avoid this type of ‘close view’ painting having felt that it was hard to get an effect I was satisfied with. So I’m pleased to have realised that I can do these simpler character illustrations as well.

Below is a GIF image showing a few stages of the process for the painting.

I have also created a speedpaint timelapse for this painting which can be watched below or on my YouTube channel:

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Time taken: 4 hours

Computer Type: Windows

Program: FireAlpaca

Drawing Tablet: Gaomon M106K

Character: Hakuryuu Ren, from the manga ‘Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic’ by Shinobu Ohtaka

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