An interesting way of recording my progress...

So from start to finish, heres how I set about working on digital illustration. I still have about 19 images to produce but I thought Id document the way Ill be working on them, Because this really worked. The image above is an outline of the final image I went with - Ill have to photograph the initial stages and backpost it. Here I was conscious of line weight and using differnt line weights for outline, detail and shading - just like I would if drawing pen on paper.

From here I set up a new layer underneath the outline, locked the outline layer and applied tone using any old colour for now. This is just about Deciding on a light source and then applying shadow being conscious of where highlights will be at a lter date.

To get gestural marks on the pentool I make a new calligraphic brush,

Then change the variable to pressure, which means when i press on hard, the line will be thick, and when I press on lightly, the line will become narrow, making for really nice visual results.

Next I put a new layer underneath the shadow tone layer and locked the two above, then with a lighter shade, applied the base coat. I like to do this second because doing the tone straight after outline seems to make the image more dynamic.

 Heres a close up of its head.. OOh Scary.

 Next I unlocked all layers and outlined the stroke. This is so I can resize the image and line qualities will stay exactly the same whatever the scale or frame size.

 From here I duplicated the Image and grouped all the seperate colourways. Then I picked from a Pantone Solid Matte swatch and tryed my best to use complimentary colours or tones of the same colour.

 This is the end product. I think pink is a little excessive but it really does show the fruits of my labour here I think. Very happy with the end result and I hope this blog post will serve those interested in using a pentool in the studio in a functional way. This documentation is based on the conept art tutorials in my summer practise blog.

Cheers!