This troublesome little monster was inspired my ferocious and furry fiendish feline friend…my cat Fiero.
For fun, I thought I’d spend a little time and color my drawing in Photoshop.
This is really easy to do. Simply scan in your drawing, open it in Photoshop and set your drawing layer to “multiply.” Then create a new layer beneath your drawing layer and start painting! If you want paint on top of the pencil lines for a smoother, more realistic look you can create another layer on top of your drawing layer I did this over the eyes since my drawing was pretty scribbly in that area.
This is much more satisfying than a traditional coloring book and gives you a good base if you ever want to take your drawing further by getting rid of the pencil lines and make it look realistic. I might finish this picture off sometime but for now I hope you enjoyed this little monster from my Photoshop coloring book
I have a great and top secret idea for a witchy illustration which I will hopefully paint some time… In the mean time here are a few witchy sketches you might enjoy.
Also, my mom decided to make a website to showcase and sell her costumes (thecostumewitch.com coming soon). It seemed apparent that she would need a witch illustration to act as her website persona. Here’s the character we came up with, she likes to sew…
There a few steps you should generally follow when creating an illustration:
1) form a concept
2) Brainstorm with at least 20 thumbnail sketches
3) do a grayscale study to determine value patterns
4) do a quick color study/create a color pallet
5) gather the reference you need (photos, models, objects etc.)
6) do a detailed drawing
7) proceed to the finished piece!
Following all or even most of these steps makes art faster, easier and better in the end. I however, have the terrible habit of skipping from step one straight to to the last two steps. I just can’t wait to get to the delicious details!
True to character, when I thought my portrait of Sala was turning out pretty well I decided to turn it into a finished piece without knowing what sort of picture I wanted it to be. I skipped planning and started playing.
I finished painted Sala’s dress then added a quick shield and stuck in some photo reference of lilies. I didn’t care for the shield so I didn’t bother finishing it but I loved the lilies so I painting some of my own…and then didn’t include them in the final piece because I eventually cropped off the whole bottom of the picture and changed my concept entirely.
Instead I decided to paint Sala with a little pet dragon. I tried several different styles of dragon. Then I thought it’d be nice to have a lantern, and then I thought the picture would look better with a background, and the background needed a landscape in it’s background and finally, after a lot of muddling, I came up with a finished piece. It probably took five times as long as it would have if I had drawn it out by hand to begin with, but I had a lot of fun creating it and learned a lot about art and Photoshop in the process.
I owe a special thanks to my wonderful husband Eric for offering helpful suggestions whenever I was at a loss. Here is some advice he gave me for the background. I especially liked the penguin, but unfortunately it didn’t make it into the final piece.
I’ve been working on this picture of my lovely little sister off and on for about a year and I finally decided to just sit down and finish it up for her birthday. After several late nights it’s finally done!!! (for now…I’ll probably refine it someday) It’s the first digital portrait I’ve attempted and I learned so much in the process. Hopefully my next piece won’t take nearly as long. I’ll do a post about the evolution of this picture later, but for now I just want to post it and say HURRAH!
