Full process of drawing Harper, starting from gesture drawing:
Step 1: Gesture Drawing
As this was a commission that I had several ideas on - I provided three gesture drawings to my client, and the above was the chosen pose idea. Note that it took 5min maximum to complete, probably closer to the 1min mark as that's generally my time limit for gesture drawings.
Step 2: Sketch + Clean
I've skipped showing a few sketch editions in this post, because normally I only do a rough sketch, and then clean it up. In this commission, I redid several pieces of the character's anatomy up to three times (especially in the face). Basically that means I resketched this character 4 times, including the gesture drawing above. Rather than cleaning an incorrect sketch - I chose to carefully sketch over my original - in a new layer.
Step 3: Colors
Getting the correct colors for this character onto my lineart was my next step. Making sure that the colors all went where they should be going - especially when it came to the gradients in the tail. I love gradients, but they can be challenging to recreate. Added in some details - such as the arm spots, the pant stripes, and the markings on the horn as well.
Step 4: Shading & Highlighting
This is my most comfortable shading style at the moment. I have learned to love airbrush plus blur - and playing with layer modes - such as multiple, darken, burn, add, etc. In this piece - I stuck to multiply for my shadows, which were created using a grayish purple, and add/overlay for my highlights, which were done with a pinkish purple to add some warmth to the design.
And that's pretty much how my pieces go at the moment. I'm playing around with dynamic movements and poses, and learning how that affects fabric and shading styles. It isn't all static anymore- and so I'm having to relearn a lot of what I had been doing for the past five or so years ^_^;;
**edit: didn't realize that the 'shaded' image was not actually my finished image x_x
