I originally made a piece similar to this for May the 4th Be With You 2017, and then I decided to make one, not bound to a specific date, for this final piece. Most of the digital painting was done in Procreate, on an iPad Pro, using an Apple Pencil. I moved the project into Photoshop to add the tattoos that I pieced together from Illustrator. I finalized the piece in After Effects for the lightsaber and smokey effect. I could have painted the blade, but it's too hard to pass up on awesome free tool like Saber from videocopilot.net when you're making any kind of beam of light for an image. Here's the one that I originally posted on Instagram below…
The tattoo on the lower arm, for both versions, is the Jedi Code written in the Star Wars-made alphabet, Aurebesh (for any curious geeks out there). Here's some progress shots for you to take a peek at. Enjoy…
