I can do cute stuff! Watch me.

So my wife challenged me to draw something cute for my next assignment in narrative illustration class. Because normally I draw robots, dinos, guns, and ships. You know, guy stuff. Well, challenge accepted. 

Here is a step by step of how I created this piece.

I started out doing 20 or so small thumbnails after doing some research and having a fun and lengthy discussion about rainbow brite with some experts in my class. Thinking about composition, shapes, and dividing my image up in the rule of 3rd's I sketched my idea down in pencil in my sketchbook using several reference images. And then went over it in pen and erased the pencil lines. I scanned it in to my computer (image 1) and realized that my rainbow brite and sprite characters were too large. I scaled them down a bit and fixed some lines and both of their eyes.

I increased both the contrast and brightness of the scanned image to make it a nice clean sketch for me to start working on. I don't always do this, but it sure saves a lot of time and frustration to start with a really good line drawing. Making sure the angles, shapes, and everything is reading well. Include a story too.

Now on to putting some value in this image. I copied the layer and pasted it onto it's self. I changed the composite method to multiply. This allows me to keep the line drawing intact while letting me see the paint under it. I used a gradient to give a hint of a sky and to add value to start with(image 2)

In painting anything I usually use the computer program Corel Painter X with a Wacom drawing tablet. It's great! I should probably upgrade to the newest version of painter but I haven't yet. It has a bunch of brushes to choose from. One of my favorites is the 2B pencil brush with the method changed to cover. You can change this in the brush controls. It has a really nice soft edge to it. I use it A LOT! 

I used this brush to block in some clouds and a little part of the happy little earth on the bottom.

For the hard edge stuff I use the scratchboard tool. It has a nice hard edge "thick to thin" pen feel to it. I used this to block in the other values of the rainbow and characters. I use this brush A LOT as well. This part is fun. It's like doing a black and white coloring book. Pretty easy stuff.

 The next part could be about form. Making things look like they have weight or volume in a three dimensional space. I choose a light source to be at the upper right of the piece. This dictates where every specific light and shadow should go on everything.

Using a new layer changed to a multiply, I color picked each value using the dropper tool and the brush and gave it a tiny bit of shadow. Doing this makes every value I pick darker. I usually play around with the opacity on this step because the multiply layer makes everything too dark I think. I also, used the grainy water blender brush to blend and smooth the values together.

Using the same method, I created another layer changed to screen to color pick the highlights.

At this point it's really hard for me not to just jump straight in to color. The important thing here is the values have to be reading really well before you jump into color. Because Value is everything in creating a good image. If the values are crappy hold off on color and fix them first. So I'll spend most of my time here. 

Once the value as awesome! (not to say they are in this image) I turn down the opacity of the line work really low and drop it on the values. Then I 'll go around the whole image with the grainy water brush and blend the values and the line work together. Keeping in mind the edges of everything.

Sometimes I like to put a rough color over it on new layer just to see how it would look and I'll experiment with different configurations of color. If it looks good enough I'll use it.

 At this point, I will go around the image a noodle it for hours and hours. Only in the spots of interest, like the three characters. This is the fun part.

Finally, I put down some glowing/sparking effects of happiness down. I used the variable splatter airbrush for the sparkles and a screen layer of warm colors over the stars and rainbow.  

After that I fill a layer over everything with a warm color and changed it to overlay and lowered the opacity to balance all the colors together.

So that's how I did it. Hopefully this was interesting and useful. Enjoy! I need to go draw a dinosaur now.