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January 28, 2011
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I've spent the last few weeks working on an illustration for this year's Thought Bubble festival in Leeds, England. While I was working out all the details, I remembered a few people asking me if I wouldn't mind showing my process a bit, so I tried to take some snapshots of the picture at various stages of completion.

I'll walk you guys through it.

After doing a few thumbnails and narrowing the ideas down, I did some pencils. At this stage they were still pretty rough, but tight enough to work over. I knew I would be inking the figures, and painting over the background in photoshop so I didn't bother tightening the trees up much.


Then I did some color tests- this step is usually pretty important for me, because it will lay the foundation for the rest of my color work. The colors for this came easily, which was a bit of a surprise. Usually I struggle with colors, but these were pretty straightforward.


Then I went ahead and threw some ink on Snow White and the Wicked Witch, like usual- with a brush and some ink. Pretty straightforward.


After that I worked on painting the background. I call it painting, I guess even though I work in Photoshop I end up approaching it as though I was working on canvas. I start with an underpainting of the basic colors I want to use, selecting from my roughs when it suits me. Then I build it up and move objects into the foreground and background when appropriate.


Now I lay on the figures! They were relatively simple to color, I only used one or two shades to lighten and darken the flat colors. My main objective was to get Snow White to stand out- Originally my idea was to have her be completely black and white, but it just didn't feel finished. So I added red, since I had the idea to add some to the background, and it really grounded the center of the image, and made her pop out without making her look completely removed from her environment.

Also notice on the witch, I colored the linework so the only black you see in the picture is on Snow White. This way the witch and the comics fall into the background a bit.


I wasn't sure about the sapling on the left that I had drawn in my original sketch, but I decided that area was pretty empty and needed a little somethin somethin to pull it together more. I also added the tree behind the witch to fill the space and add another vertical. These were all pieces of my original idea that I had deemed excessive, but thought to bring them back in the end. I guess you should always just go with your gut! I tend to over-think things, and second-guess myself if I work on something for a while, not really a good habit I guess. Anyway this is the final version!


And here is a close-up:



So there you have it! Snow White and the Seven Comics, for Thought Bubble 2011! And if anyone is curious, yes I will be attending :)

**This post was originally syndicated at my blog Ink and Thunder.
  • Mood: Spidey Sense
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:iconnire-erin:
thnx for showing ur process, it helps a lot with 0thers trying to do something like this
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:icondiegotripodi:
Great to see the process, thanks for sharing!
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:iconmaidenofwar:
oh thank you so much for this; very insightful :heart:
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:iconhangmansfable:
Rock on, thank you.
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:iconmonkeydeathcult:
~monkeydeathcult Jan 29, 2011  Professional General Artist
Thanks for posting that, its always nice to get a glimpse behind the magic ;)
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:iconcolourscientist:
thanks for posting the steps!
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:iconcroovman:
~croovman Jan 29, 2011  Student General Artist
Thank you!
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:icongibsontwist:
That's such a coincidence, I get questions about your process all the time too!
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:iconjaimedl:
Thanks for sharing your process. I always enjoy looking at how artist put together their work from start to finish. I have one question if you don't mind. Did you use reference for drawing the dress? Just wondering.
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:iconbeckycloonan:
*beckycloonan Jan 29, 2011  Professional Traditional Artist
The whole things is drawn from my head- but I've drawn a lot of dresses from reference in the past, so I have this brain reference file that I refer to.
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