Commission Work: Sketching Ariete from Heavenly Bodies 🖤🌹✨

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all been having a happy week so far:)

I started working on a new commission this week and I wanted to show you all some sneak-peeks of the progress! 😍 I mentioned in my last post that I normally can’t share much about commissions because they’re usually NDA (there’s one commission I finished in December that is SO exciting and I can’t talk about it yet! 🥲💗) but for this one, the author said I could share sneak-peeks with you! 🥰

This is Ariete from the book Heavenly Bodies by Imani Erriu! He’s one of the craziest book villains I’ve ever read, so when I was asked to draw a character sheet of him, I was so excited 🤭🖤

Imani really loved my character sheet of Enzo (the male lead in her book) that I drew last year — it wasn’t a commission, I just drew him because I loved the book! So she asked for some artwork of a few other characters in Heavenly Bodies and OF COURSE I accepted because I’m such a fangirl 😂 Here’s the sheet of Enzo I made last year:

Ariete’s design is going to be fun because the descriptions of him are SO vivid: he wears black and red velvet suits, his hair is black streaked with red, and his eyes are a deep burgundy ❤️ Before all the colors though, I had to try to get his personality right in the sketches!

At first, my initial sketches of him looked like this:

The only difference is the top right sketch. The author liked it, but she thought it would be better to portray an angry/dangerous expression because Ariete is the god of wrath in the book — so I made these other options!

 The sketch in this one is more of a toned-down angry look :)

 This one was more of an evil smirk!

 This sketch was the tamest of all of them, but I always try to give the author a wide range of vibes so they can choose the one that best fits their vision :)

 The most unhinged of all lol 😂 a snarl with a fist! 👊🏼

 Finally, she decided on this one! I like this one the best too, because it shows Ariete’s wrathful side without being over the top. It also showcases his very sharp canines, which is an important characteristic in the book!

The next step is to paint flat colors, which I’ll send over to Imani for approval and then I’ll get started on painting and rendering :) I’m going to record the painting process for you guys so you’ll get to see it in a real-time video! 🥰 Stay tuned for it 😍

Ok long post!! That’s all for now :) I hope you all have a lovely day! 💗

Love,

Lydia 💌