These are really nice little examples you're giving. And the high quality of the art itself serves as extra motivation for anyone seeking to improve their skills!

Thank you! I'm glad people are finding use out of them!

wait stupid question, do you just check by making the color image your working on into greyscale or start in greyscale? i know some start in grey and add color later.

I actually use a combination of "Black and white" layer and then a "posterize" layer set to around 3-6 in order to check. The posterize reduces your color uses to the number that you set it to. So if it's set to 3 it will only show 3 colors (in this case it is set to 4 colors: Black, white and two medium greys). This works really well for these "3-value structure" studies!

I sometimes do start in greyscale and then add in colors later but that's not entirely relevant to the study~

I am no expert, but if the objective is to make the monster the creepiest, the unreadable does it for me
Then again, it just could be triggering memories from those unintentionally creepy NES graphics when I was a kid; uncanny valley at its finest

Nah the objective isn't exactly to make the monster creepy, though that's certainly a part of it, "Bloodborne fanart" so it has to borrow some of the lovecraftian language from the game.

The objective for this is to establish a power differential between the two entities. While the monster is taking up the most space, giving him a semblance of power, the composure of the two characters in the front coupled with the fact that they have the most value contrast, gives them the greatest visual presence, a different kind of power!

You're going to the next level with this !

Thank you! I appreciate that!

That is very interesting to see. Thank you very much for sharing! Now I want to give it a try myself and see how much better I can with that technique. :D

yes!