Kratos Digital Oil [Fan Art / Study]

As I continue my path of learning the anatomy of the human body and play more and more traditionally with pen and ink, I return to digital every now and then to practice, explore and get excited about the end game.

I either paint people that are important to me or I paint stuff that had an impact and influenced me over the course of the years. Yes, fan art, sorry if you don’t like the idea, but painting random people from reference packs is only an exercise for me, it holds no meaning in itself, so I’m usually not very keen on doing it more than I need to. I’d very much rather paint characters from my favorite games, like Mr. Kratos here.

As I am doing these, I am also exploring myself and learning new things about what I want from has been a long, hard, and very lonely journey in art:
> I have no interest in learning latin names and all the muscles and joints, just the bare minimum (like that beautiful zygomatic arch of Kratos that I so much struggled to keep true)
> I have no interest in likeness, it is only a by product
> I know I can copy anything 1:1, especially in digital, it’s just a matter of time of copying precise shapes of light and dark, which I consider mindless and a waste of precious time, I have no interest in that either, so I feel the need to explore and modify
> I absolutely hate lasso painting
> More and more, I am straying away from digital and I am hoping that one day I will be able to keep the old crafts alive with pen and ink, oil, and watercolor. It’s a lifetime goal. Digital is all good for exploring 1000 options and stuff, but after almost 9 years, it still FEELS clunky and like it is missing something (when I started with digital, I barely could afford a tablet, so convenience was one of the main reasons, besides fear)

Credit goes to the amazing Rafa Grassetti, who designed Kratos and the sculpture I referenced. Ragnarok is coming soon, friends!