My Little Elfy Step by Step

A lot of people post how they do their art on here, so I thought I'd give it a go. I don't really have a following, and no one really asks me how I do my stuff... so I really just did this for fun.. anyhow...

Here's how I did my recent deviation "My Little Elfy" ( [link] ) in a step by step format:

Step 1: In Painter I make a new document at 300 dpi. Usually at 10 x 15 because that's what I'm used to doing comic pages at.

Step 2: I sketch a loose drawing of what I'm doing on a new layer. I'm using blue here to make the layer separations clear later. I'm using a Wacom tablet for everything from this point on.

Step 3: On another new layer I draw a tighter sketch.

Step 4: Now the lengthy part. I carefully ink the image on another new layer(making sure I'm at 100% zoom for detailed work) using the round pen tool. I usually fade out the under drawing at this point to better see the inked lines and prevent missing any.

Step 5: Once the inking is done I move the image to Photoshop for coloring. First I lay down simple colors with just fills and gradients.

Finish!: I add lighting and shading and do some color knockouts here for atmospheric perspective. I adjusted the color to warm it up just a bit. (Note: If you've watched the clock in the bottom right you'll see it took me exactly 3 hours.. that wasn't planned, but it's pretty cool!)