Its still the 9th? Weird. Guess I can lose track of time when I get a bit of free time. Here is the cleaned up line art scanned and adjusted to its best. The beginnings of the paint are added. I never work on a white background if I can at all help it. As you can see the first step is to chose a background color and general lighting direction. I try to chose a color that will be prevalent in most of the painting.

The program I work in for about 95% of the process is Painter X. I use the Artist Oils, Oils, and random other sets occasionally to get certain effects. Will go into more detail as I go along.

No scans yet? Nah. Once I remove it from the drawing pad, I'm done. So for now, more grainy photos. After a few days of getting more work to clear out, I'm back to the drawing of our bride. Filigree and frills galore; I'm a bit worried if there will be areas of too much clutter so I begin to leave areas of cloth and forms empty. Our background at this point is wispy and left alone for the most part but not before adding a bit of foliage from various vases. The wisps will be withered forms, maybe skulls or ghostly faces of past husbands.

The story of the drawing is a bride of a dark heritage, the veil being a haunted heirloom passed down through a family of very powerful women. In the piece itself is a play on the old, new, borrowed, blue, with even a play on the sixpence in her dangerously ridiculous shoes. There's a Victorian/dark part to the image itself which I hope to bring out when making my color choices.

I decided to make my most recent a work in progress walk-through. It has been months since I've done anything as far as full blown tedious work, and it feels good to get back to pencil again. As I show progress I'll list a few things I do, quirks, et al.

After my previous loose sketch is done, it is scanned and reprinted as dark and sloppy as I can get it. Since I do not have a light box, I use a smooth and bright marker paper of the highest grade to do a clean copy in pencil. This paper can take a beating of erasing, and helps pencil application remain crisp and smooth. The sloppy sketch is to not lock me into specific designs for redrawing but provide a guide. I can experiment and experiment as I go along.

I use a .3 mechanical pencil mostly and .5 for use of a thicker line for larger forms. With stencil and freehand, I spend a lot of time getting a very precise line drawing. I also use trick of shaved erasers to get certain effects with pencil. I consider the line drawing itself to have just as much artistic merit as a fully finished traditional or digital piece and take care of them with fixative and mounting once done. I wash my hands often and never blow or get oils on to the paper. The paint brush is sprayed with acrylic fixative and is used to get lead and erasing off the paper. This prevents smudging, hand moisture/oils, and crinkling of the paper.

Sometimes this process may seem ridiculous when I paint over a lot of my pencil work, but a solid drawing always results in my being more confident in the painting on top of it. That and spending so much time during this stage is relaxing and actually gives my eyes a break from digital stuff. I've several methods of line art where I will just use a loose drawing to get a loose and painterly finish, or just speed paint without a drawing. It all depends on what I'm trying to achieve.

In other better news, some of my works are included over at CGWallpapers.com. So if you're looking to purchase some very lovely artists' work for your desktop, head on over. Really nice stuff and folks there.