Demonic Twister

I drew two demons fighting in an aerial battle against a stormy background. The dominant demon is using a technique popularly known as the Twister. Available on my Redbubble poster site here.

Here is a breakdown of my working process:




The twister is a technique that originated from wrestling and made popular by grappler Eddie Bravo. It's a technique used in his 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu system and, although not legal under IBJJF rules, it has seen some success within MMA circles - most famously by UFC fighter, 'Korean Zombie' Chan Sung Jung. You can see the finish he used here. Plus there is a nice breakdown of the technique by Rener and Ryron Gracie here. I used both these references to help me depict the technique correctly. As usual, I opened up Manga Studio Pro and using the pencil tool, sketched out a basic human outline:

All seemed well so I then opened up another layer and started drawing the characters using the brush tool. However...

Something didn't seem quite right with the depiction. I mean, using Raijin and Fujin the Japanese gods was fine - see classical painting of the two here - but their cheeky grins somehow made the drawing too, umm, how can I put this, friendly. Yes that's probably the best way to describe it.

A quick discussion with some artist friends and we came to the conclusion that changing facial expressions would help, a lot!

After inking the line art, I saved it as a png file with no background. Then I coloured it in using Photoshop brushes.

Here is the finished piece:

The full size A2 poster version can be obtained on my Redbubble page here.

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