Step-By-Step: Rema and Perra

Originally I was going to break down one of my digital illustrations from Where Do My Brothers Go? but I've decided to use my newest digital illustration instead as it forces me to announce... I am writing a fantasy novel! At this point, I've written 31,000 words out of a goal of 60,000, and I started writing it in 2021, so nobody hold your breath for a publication date! I am quite serious about it though, and really think it might be good (oh, hey imposter syndrome) so I'm putting it out here, now. Also, if anyone wants to talk about writing a novel, PLEASE hit me up because I am in personally uncharted territory!

Allow me to introduce Rema A'Lazea and her younger sister, Perra! They are water fairies, and are the main characters (I think) of my first fantasy novel. 

This drawing was never meant to be a big, finished piece, my end intent was to use it as social media content. Full disclosure, my fiction is written under the pen name D.C. McAndrews (shocker, I know 😉) so feel free to find me on Facebook and Instagram for my writing - although there's not much there at this point (again, it's only half written.)

Ok, enough about the writing, let's get to the drawing!

1. Draw with pencil and paper.
Is that one a surprise? My first step is always to draw with mechanical pencil and paper. I've tried sketching digitally before, and I find I get too lost in the layers. So I stick with pencil and paper, as I'm much more comfortable that way - even when I know I'm going to be coloring it digitally later on.  

2. Ink the drawing with pen.
     2A. In the case of Rema and Perra, I also added shading with pencil
I've talked before about my inking process. I use Faber-Castell pens, and the two I used for this drawing were S and XS. I go through two rounds of inking; the first is just straight lines (like on Perra's lower half), the second is to add more depth to the drawing with a neurographic technique and line variation (some lines being thicker than others.) After I finish the inks, I erase all the pencil sketch marks. For this one, I also added some shading with my pencil and a blending stump. I knew I would be digitally coloring it, and wanted it to have a nice mixture of digital and traditional mediums.

3. Scan it in!
    3A. Ok, for this one I took a digital photograph of the drawing to color. 
It doesn't really matter how you do it, as long as the resulting digital image is high-quality. I will usually scan my drawings in with my HP ENVY Photo 7800 printer at a resolution of 600 ppi (pixels per inch - a good printing standard is 300 ppi; ok-printing is 150 ppi; and most images online are 72 ppi.) This enables me to resize my drawings as needed. 

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 to edit and manipulate my digital artworks, with a Gaomon PD1161 digital tablet (with screen - a game changer) and stylus. 

4. Paint the Flats layer.
    4A. And other details!
I love my flats layers. When you turn off everything else, they look ridiculous and wobbly. I used to have many more flats layers, and on more complicated drawings I will still separate out my flats per section or character, but for the most part I am comfortable enough with my own process that I might just have 1-3 flats layers total. This is also where I add other details that aren't shading or highlights - like the whites of the eyes, or maybe freckles or blush. In order to get my digital coloring to let the drawing underneath show through, I made my flats layers transparent by setting the blending mode to "Multiply". 

5. Highlights and shading.
    5A. Secondary shinies, in this case!
I remember being a teenager, learning Photoshop over twenty years ago. I wanted so badly to be good at it, to bring my drawings to life in a way I didn't have the skills yet to do with traditional mediums. I remember the first time I learned how to shade and highlight hair. I wish I could tell teenage Haley not to worry, because we'll get there. And people will pay us to do it, too. Maybe that's a blog post for another time. 

Really in this step, I'm giving more depth to the drawing. I didn't add any digital shading to Rema and Perra, since I had added the pencil shading earlier. But I did add one layer of highlights, with an additional layer of white for extra shiny spots: on Perra's knees, Rema's shins, the front of their hair, their noses, etc. I wanted their skin to look smooth, unlike the fabric of Rema's pants which are colored in a way to look more dull.  

Make the original image black and white to really make the added colors pop, and done!

This wasn't ever meant to be a big, finished piece for printing or sale. My original motivation was to have an illustrated character reference sheet because I can't always remember what shade of teal Rema's hair is; and then once I added Perra I wanted to share it on social media as content to go with my book. I have the ambitious plan of someday illustrating the cover for the novel, too, and even have it sketched in my current notebook. If this was a finished piece that I would make prints for sale, I would have added a background and given it many more layers of details.  It's not unheard of for some of my drawings to have over a hundred digital layers of color, to give them just the right look or have added details that nobody will ever notice but I know that they are there.

While this isn't a how-to step-by-step breakdown, I did want to share my digital process with everyone. I don't know that it's necessarily a quicker process than when I'm working in traditional mediums, but there's definitely no waiting for it to dry! If you're curious about my illustration technique when I'm using watercolors and colored pencils, check out this blog post from 2022, where I show each step of my process illustrating my Counting Toasters 1 to 10 book.