Software: Procreate

*Note: this is not meant to be a tutorial. This is mostly my own notes on my thought processes and want to share with others my process rather than just showing the end product. I mostly learn from my attempts and many years of experience and practice and be willing to screw up. I just mostly want to share my love of art with others, and I am thankful for the online artist community that inspires me to be an better artist than the person I was, and push myself to be better than I am.

1. Sketch: I usually do a quick rough sketch using reference material and figure out how I want the composition of the overall image be otherwise I will probably be unhappy about it if the end result image is not quite what I want (because the anatomy is off, or the character is not placed in a good position)

2. Line art and Black and White: like the clean up artist who do the line art for animation, I draw over the sketch layer while still keeping the liveliness of the intended image. Sometimes I like to do a completed image in Black and White and see how well the design can stand on its own. I’m still practicing and am practicing using different line thicknesses to add the illusion of depth perception. The resulting image can hopefully be a good design for decals or whatever other products I may do.

3. Base Color and Flats: the base color is the first color layer, the cel shading step. We then can add multiple layers of color, lighting and shadows to add further complexity to the color. But the base color is basically a “safe base” (which can be subject to change), but if your other layers are just being weird, you can always back track and start again from home base.

4. Light, Shadows, and Glitter: nowadays with digital illustration, I am still playing around and experimenting with layers and lighting (multiply, add, overlay, etc...) and color theory. At this point I am ready to be done with the image and just amping up on the lighting and shadows on both the character and background/foreground. Someone once said that perfection is accomplished when there is nothing left to take away. Another saying I remember is one a friend told me “if you do not make a complete mess of the art, you are not trying hard enough”, which I interpreted as it’s okay to make mistakes and mess ups, it means you’re experimenting with things and see what’s possible. And for digital art you can always “undo”.