Buffy Fanart Portraits

This was one of the first - I think it was THE first one I painted in ArtRage Studio Pro, back in late November. A marathon all-nighter that took me eight hours in total, she was referenced from the poster I found and used the on Would Buffy Stake Edward lens.

Buffy is the main character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the 'Slayer' herself. Sarah Michelle Gellar won a ton of awards for that, and is still going strong as an actress.

More can be read about Buffy Summers and Sarah Michelle Gellar on Wikipedia, though be wary of spoilers.

This was a screen-cap of one of the episodes - i was watching it and just had to draw her face at that point and spent a while mucking around with the pause and the screenshot. I was practicing an 'ink and watercolours' style in ArtRage. It was much quicker - one or two hours.

This is my favourite painting this year, I think. It took me hours!

Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
A bit about Willow : She's one of the Scooby gang, ends up being a very powerful witch (probably the most powerful mortal in the series, except she has this little Darth Willow issue... ) and is in a very sweet and believable relationship with her girlfriend Tara through much of the series - my, and many other people's, favourite couple :D I think they were among the first positive mainstream portrayals of Teh Gay.

Painted in ArtRage Studio Pro, over six and a half hours, in one sitting, begun at quarter past midnight, after a horrible dry spell of rarely being able to paint for more than an hour or two at most due to brother ending up in hospital with a broken foot and eating all my free time ever (I often have to paint more than one random thing to get warmed up, so my painting sessions can be... unpredictable! ).
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. Oh hey there, 7am, nice to see you!

Rambling Backstory
This was painted six months after the original Bufy portrait above. Well, I just got money off Cannibal-Cartoonist for posters from the Drawfest stalls at Wellington and Christchurch Armageddon, and apparently (surprise, surprise) Scifi conventions are a Good Place for Buffyverse fanart. (Actually, was very pleased it was good *enough* to sell ;P ). Anyway, that reminded me that I'd always wanted to paint Willow (Alyson Hannigan) - I always end up drawing Buffy for some reason, even though I like the look of Willow better *confused* ...

Anyway, trawled the internets for good photographs, found myself some good references and dived into ArtRage, and came up with this. I picked a much more challenging image, and used some artistic interpretation on the colouring. And, comparing it to the Buffy of six months ago (first image on page), I am pleased.

Realistic hair is surprisingly hard. At least it was better this time *sighs* You can read more about Alyson and Willow on Wikipedia [ware spoilers!].

This is the painting of Tara (Amber Benson) that I flittered off from to paint the one below. I think I was up to four or six hours (in ArtRage again) and was getting sleepy. I finished it a couple of months later in October! (Total time eightish hours)

Here, I went and used the hair colour from Tara's first appearance, which was a very pale bleached whitish-blonde; her natural colour is brown. I did that for two reasons: firstly, to challenge myself a bit, and not take it directly from the reference photograph (and hair is HARD, so that may have been a mistake!) and secondly, because I was somewhat fascinated with the colour and wanted to explore it a bit.

Tara was the shy witch played by Amber Benson, who turned up in the fourth season and became Willow's girlfriend. She was a lovely girl and a fan favourite. Tara and Willow were probably my favourite couple from the show.
Amber Benson was pretty unknown, but has gone on to have a varied and prolific career! Not only has she appeared in a lot of films in the last few years, she also writes novels and comic books, a play, and sings. You can find more information on Wikipedia about both Tara Maclay [Ware Spoilers!] and Amber Benson.

This painting was a three hour distraction halfway through painting a much more realistic version - I was getting bored, but I really wanted to finish a picture, so I picked a different reference and went the 'ink and watercolours' route.

Winifred 'Fred' Burkle (Amy Acker), Season Four of Angel. (For the record? Season Three was boring angsty drivel, Season four was good and I can't get my hands on Season Five :faint: )

She's an adorable and very very pretty character, and is it me, or does she look a LOT like Leia here?

Reference was a screenshot from the show:


In Season Five, Fred was infected by the God-King Illyria, who was also played by Amy Acker.

Page One: Illyria The God-King Illyria, played by Amy Acker, appeared in Season Five of Angel. Both beautiful and deadly, her rebirth killed one of the previous characters, and brought great grief to Angel, Wesley, Gun, Spike and Lorne.

Yes! She did actually have a role in Buffy - she was one of the potentials in the seventh season!

Felicia Day is more recently known for such awesomely geeky projects as Dr. Horrible and The Guild and I quickly (~one hour) painted her in ArtRage 3 after watching Dr Horrible. I'm quite pleased actually, with how similarly the sketch came out to the original photo.

Anthony Stewart Head played Rupert Giles the school librarian (initially) and Buffy's Watcher.

The top two are Anthony Stewart Head - left is him as Rupert Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and right I think is just a generic celebrity shot. The woman is Christina Hendricks, who played Saffron in Firefly, another awesome television show by Joss Whedon.

If you like slightly messy, mostly unfinished looking sketches, then have a wander over to my Scrap Book Sketches.

Hanging around bored at home, on my mother's birthday (she was overseas, and I'd had to move back in to feed the cat). Sketched Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) off the back of one of the servies DVDs lying around.

A tiny little sketch! Actual size is the view above. Inked sort of neatly in July. You can see the original pencil sketch of Buffy still, here on my Scrap-paper Sketches page.