A while ago, I decided to do a personal project of caricaturing Snape from the Harry Potter series.

Research

When I’m drawing something that really exists, I start by gathering reference materials. Lucky for me, there are so many images of Snape on the interwebs. Here is a collection of what I found.

Thumbnails

I then quickly sketched out ideas to get a feel for face shape and over all look. They aren’t glamorous, but here they are.

Sketch

Next, I went into detailing a sketch. I probably put a little more detail in this than I normally do. I’m sure I was making up for my poor thumbnails.

I liked the drawing, but after scanning it, I felt like his forehead was a bit too big. I took it into Photoshop and adjusted some things until I was happy with it.

I felt better about this, but his eyes were too close together. I took it back into Photoshop for more adjusting.

I was happy with this. Time to start painting.

Painting

I started with a background. I really wanted green to emphasis Snape’s Slytherininess.

Adding a layer of color on over the drawing. You can see that I decided early on to add a nice green rim light on the left side of his face and shoulder.

Add detail and more layers of color to get the final result. Over all this took me about 5-6 hours.

After it was finished, I added Hogwarts in the background.