LogInConcept Artist Natcha Ngamtweerat shared with us the process of making the Painter’s Bedroom project with Blender, whose character is enhanced with Victorian-style furniture, explaining how the warm and cozy atmosphere was achieved through coloring and lighting.
Introduction
Hello everyone, I’m Natcha Ngamtweerat from Thailand. I’ve been working as a concept artist/illustrator for four years. I started learning Blender when I was in FZD school in 2020, taught by our art instructor, Dominic Chan.
About The Painter’s Bedroom Project
The Painter’s Bedroom project started as a fun idea to create a dream Bedroom/Painting studio for my old self, as I used to do oil paintings back in college. Before this project, I took a short online course to advance my skills in Blender, so this piece is also, in a way, a chance for me to put those new skills into practice.
When searching for references, I usually start with the furniture, as I feel like it would give the room more character and say a lot about the personality of the person living in it. In the case of the Painter’s Bedroom, I wanted the furniture to have a feminine look, so I researched ‘Victorian furniture’ and made sure to incorporate the ‘Victorian Curve’ into different parts of furniture in the room, e.g., Bed’s headboard, some of the tables, and the sofa. In addition, I wanted to create a smooth flow within the room where everything seemed like it was custom-made to fit perfectly in the room. Therefore, I researched keywords such as Built-in furniture, Storage Cupboard Built-ins, and Built-in Desk ideas, then organized everything into a reference board before sketching out ideas for the piece.
Layout & Composition
For the layout and composition of the objects, I first identify where the main focal points would be, which in this case, is the Bed and Canvas area, as these areas illustrate the main purpose of the room. This layout was based on an early piece I did for FZD on the ‘Teenage Art Student’s Bedroom’ project in 2020 (image below).
As you can see, the bed and canvas are also placed in the same position as that of the Painter’s Bedroom (circled in red).
I started by sketching out the piece using the perspective guide in Procreate, keeping the piece above as a base to start my composition. The first image below demonstrates how I set up my perspective guide in Procreate, and next to it is the rough sketch I created using the guide.
In this rough sketch, I planned out where I would place all the furniture and where would be the appropriate space to put interesting yet also functional built-ins into the room.
Blocking Out
After the sketch, I moved on to blocking out the scene in Blender to see how the composition looks in a 3D space. The first image shows my first attempt to translate the sketch into 3D blocks.
In the second image, I then tweaked the design, adding and subtracting details and changing some of the designs to make the piece flow better. At this point, I realized the camera angle was too flat, which made the room look cluttered. Therefore, I fixed the camera view by raising the camera up to make the room look more spacious and ready for more details to be added later.
Coloring & Lighting
Next, I proceeded to color the objects in Blender. I started by coloring all the furniture and selecting different types of browns for the wooden material. Then, I decided on the colors of the other materials besides wood, first on the focal point areas, trying to make the colors pop against the wood to catch the viewer’s attention.
The first image below shows a screenshot of the piece at an early stage when I had just added the first pass of color and lighting.
At this stage, I decided to add colored area rugs for both areas of the focal point to make those spaces stand out more. For the lighting, I also started in the main focal point areas, lighting up those areas using the point light in Blender. In this piece, I aim to achieve a warm, cozy, homey vibe; therefore, I chose very warm and saturated light colors as the main light sources for the room.
The second image above shows my next stage in the process. I exported the rendered image from Blender into Procreate. I did a quick rough sketch over the image to explore the placements of new objects in the scene, and also any new ideas that could enhance the story-telling within the piece.
After the sketch-over, I 3D-modeled the objects according to what I had planned for the sketch and adjusted the camera angle and lighting a bit more. The result of this is shown in the first image below. I then exported the 3D render into Procreate and adjusted the image using curves in Procreate to make the image lighter with less contrast, and adjusted the color to be more blue+red as the raw render looks, in my point of view, too yellow and intense. I adjusted the image to be lighter and have less contrast as I plan to finish the piece off with black lines on top, and I wanted the lines to show better. The image below on the right is the result of this curve adjustment with added background and some paint-over work done on another layer in Procreate to break the stiffness of some of the 3D renderings.
This is also where the organic details were added, e.g., plants, paint stains, as well as the additional light bulbs near the windows, wardrobe, and shelf areas. The light bulbs were added using the ‘add’ layer in Procreate, which makes them look like they are glowing.
Refinement
Lastly, I drew lines over the whole image to tighten up the finishing and give definition to the loose areas in the 3D render. The first image below shows my line layer and the second image shows the finished piece when the lines are added. The time it took to complete this piece was roughly two weeks, with the designing and sketching phase taking up more time than the rest.
Summary
When it comes to the advice I would like to give to anyone starting out, I think I would say, do a lot of personal projects, choose the subjects you are most passionate about, and spend more time in the design phase than the finishing. I would also like to say, that it is okay to take your time, just focus on growing every day. Thank you for reading!