Hi! I picked this piece for a step-by-step because unlike most of the stuff in my gallery which came with like 20+ layers and about 7 mirror files for milestones, it had a pleasantly straightforward process. That way I’d be able to get my point across better and not irk you guys with unnecessary details sprung from my sucky indecisiveness and lame incompetence.

I consider myself more of a lineartist than anything else, so my ‘coloring’ process would sound retarded and come unsurprisingly as a no-brainer. If you expected fancy painting tips or lighting theories or in-depth reflected colors or other complicated thingamajigs, be forewarned that you won’t find any of them here. I’m the sort who puts ‘impression’ before ‘technique’ and for me, as long as I’m happy with the outcome, even the most retarded and simplest of processes is agreeable. It’s even better because doing things simple would just mean cutting back time and effort! _{Unless, of course, you’re awesome and you like to do things the hard way, just because you can. Should that be the case, I salute you and I suppose I should be the one checking out your step-by-step.}

Anyhoo, this is not a tutorial. I don’t ‘tutor’ because I’m sure each of us has our own way of doing things. This here just happens to be mine:

1.
First, I toyed with the idea in my head and then put it into drawing. No need to be neat here, just overall general placement and how the image should roughly look. I like couches and abs, so there you go. The rest I see as decorations.

2.
Refined the rough sketch. Fixed the perspective, adjusted the composition, adjusted the characters’ positions using actual anatomical proportions. Most of us would want to get straight past this point and actually DRAW, but I consider spending more time in this step would mean less hassle afterwards.

3.
Filled the wire figures with muscles and corrected some slight anatomy issues. I like making subtle details when drawing poses, like maybe a twist on the ankle or a slight curbing of the toes, or the sexy taut lines made by the muscles beneath as they scream with tension. I find that the human body has too many awesomeness to offer visually, even when those are only faint contours and jagged lines.

4.
Toning. I find it easier making values with black-and-white than using actual colors, which have different hues and values in themselves. If you have no trouble using colors as values then bless you; unfortunately I’m not that speshul. Picked a new layer and set to multiply, started toning by giving different values to different objects according to their basic colors in reality. E.g., jeans would be darker than skin because it should be dark blue whilst skin is mostly, well, skin color. Giving basic colors to each object would give a more realistic tone once we’ve overlapped them with shadows; everything would set itself apart from the rest nicely.

5.
Created a new layer set to overlay to tint the value with their actual colors. The colors would seem washed and desaturated when using overlay or color, but in my case since it’s indoors I figured the colors would naturally be desaturated anyway.

6.
Made a second overlay layer to add the final atmospheric and moody touch. Usually this layer would consist of a single main tone and a few others here and there for accent. Lots of red, add a little purple and blue, and the image is close to being finished.

7.
Finishing touches, usually on a layer set to normal. Highlights, details, some cleaning up, slap on a title, and voila, the final product!

Photoshop + Wacom all the way. No textures, no fancy brushes, no nothing out of the ordinary. I know and apologize that I made such an incomprehensibly sucky step-by-step—too many words, too little point. I’m an artist after all and not a best-selling DIY author. I promise I’ll try harder next time, if you guys are still up for more.

Cheers!



Commission Details here!