Dark Fan Art Jonas and Martha

[Advertising] After watching the third season of Dark on Netflix, I had to draw a fan art of Jonas Kahnwald and Martha Nielsen. In this post, I will present my artwork and tell, why Dark is a science fiction series I will never forget.

Good reasons why you should watch the science fiction series Dark

If you haven’t heard about this realistic science fiction series Dark, it is time to catch up. Dark is one of the best series I ever watched, because it works without spaceships, aliens and supernatural powers. While watching the first episodes, one might think that this story is going to be a mystery thriller or crime. But this is definitely not the case.

Dark is about the mysterious disappearance of children in a German small town called Winden. Episode after episode, the circumstances become weirder. It seems like everyone in Winden is hiding secrets. The story is complex, because it takes place in several epochs with dozens of protagonists. Dark is the kind of story, I was missing on TV for a long time. This is the reason, why I had to show my appreciation by drawing a fan art.

Symmetry as a leifmotif in Dark

Some people might have noticed, that Dark works a lot with visual effects. If you haven’t noticed it yet, think about the kaleidoscope effect in the trailer. Symmetry is a main motive in this series. I picked up that theme by arranging the protagonists symmetrically. Even the pockets and the seams of the yellow rain coat are in perfect symmetry. Martha and Jonas stand divide the circle into a golden section. In my coloured version, you can see that the dark sky is drawn in the complimentary colour of the iconic yellow raincoat building the perfect contrast to the foreground.

You can enlarge or scroll through the drawings by clicking them.

Reference pictures of Matha and Jonas

Before drawing this fan art of Jonas and Martha, I had to collect plenty of reference pictures of the series Dark. I used a lot of photos of the main actors Louis Hofmann and Lisa Vicari. Another source was the Internet Movie Database for screenshots and trailers of the series. I also searched for reviews and insights. Though drawing a comic sketch, it was very important to me, to match the expressions, hairdos and traits of each character. My main source for drawing Jonas’ iconic yellow jacket were online shops with similar pieces of clothing.

On my YouTube channel you can watch me draw the outlines. Just click on the picture below.

Digital Vector Art

Before drawing this fan art of Dark, I did not decide whether it should be a realistic or comic like portrait of Jonas Kahnwald and Martha Nielsen. Therefore I drew both.

Recently, I had a lot of fun with drawing vector-like illustrations. I think it’s because they don’t take so much time. Only by drawing a few strikes, you can characterize the person sufficiently. For each basic colour you choose only two to three shades lighter or darker. I call this style pseudo vector art. Technically these aren’t vector images, but rasterized images. Due to the reduced colour depth, they look like vector images.

How to generate a background

After a couple of years of photo manipulation, my hard work paid off. I was able to generate this background in less than thirty minutes. Instead of drawing the nightly sky, I just used a colour gradient tool. Either, I did not draw the sphere in the background. It’s just the result of the elliptical selection tool, a large blurred out pen and some wave filters. Adding the transparency to that sphere was not the biggest deal. You can use an alpha channel mask and modify it via grey tones. The spruces in the background are made with a special brush or stamp, which I collected some years ago at Deviant Art. These are commonly used for photo manipulation.

How to draw digital light effects digitally

There are at least two ways to implement a glow effect into the sphere in the background. You can clone that sphere layer, fill it with white colour and use the Gaussian Blur. Another way is to select the area outside the sphere layer. By choosing a soft wide brush, you can draw the glow manually. Let Gaussian Blur do the rest for you. The sparkles above the metallic spheres were drawn with a haystack brush. If you don’t have one, you can quickly improvise by drawing a pin and setting the scatter parameter to the max. The dodge and burn tools are designed for making things glow, but they only work if used on slightly desaturated colours.

You can intensify the light effects by showing the impact of light as a reflexion on skin, hair and clothing. I increase the saturation of all surfaces that point to the source of light. Gently tilted surfaces are mixed with an apricot colour. The yellow reflexions of the rain coat hit hair and skin. Since the colour of the jacket is quite intense, you can exaggerate the yellowish undertone on the skin.

From October 9th on, you can watch the second part of the tutorial on my YouTube channel. 2,5 hours would be way too long for a YouTube video. Therefore, my coloured version of this fan art will be presented at ten times the speed.

I hope you learned something on digital art while reading this post. Have you enjoyed my Dark fan art on Jonas Kahnwald and Martha Nielsen?

Have you already seen Dark?

Do you have recommendations for realistic science fiction novels or series?

Please comment, if you know some novels or series like Dark. I am searching for realistic science fiction stories some month, but I did not find any. Our libraries are filled with space operas, military science fiction and young adult dystopias. Sometimes I like reading those too, but I miss the science inside science fiction and a bit of day to day conversation. Today’s novels are more about thrill, sense of wonder and exaggeration. Since I’m finished with my science fiction classics of the 30s and 60s I need some interesting books or series. I also like to find some stories which are related to my realistic soft science fiction writings. I read stories in German and English both. Thank you in advance!

P.S. This article had to be tagged as advertising, because it’s about a Netflix series. I do not make money or gain any reward by naming the series, the characters or online offers. This post is about my personal experience with this series combining it with my artwork.