Hi friends!

I've had a few of my fellow artists here on devart and elsewhere ask me how I get some of my drawings from A to Z, and since I was working on my new "Gorillaz-style" devID I figured I should keep the "stages" I've done in order to lay them out for y'all to take a look at.

This isn't really a tutorial per-se, since I can't really make any explanations on how I place lines where I do and how I choose my colors, but this should give you a pretty good idea as to what happens from the point I get the pencil on paper for the first time to the point where I hit file ->save as.

Each picture is labeled with the corresponding title, so feel free to join the ride

Pencil Work
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This is the absolutely hardest part for me, since I have an emotional relationship with my eraser and use it more than the pencil. But this is where the drawing gets layed down, everything from the base figure separated into body parts and joints (although I'm not too good at that, I'm learning) to the finest lines of detail - it's all here. I was trying to base this drawing on a very specific comic style, so I made sure to have the limbs long and unproportional and to make the lines bulky, with big hands and a long neck. This stage can take me days on end, or longer. I work with Papermate HB pencils, only in rare cases do I use other grades of pencil.

Initial linework
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This is the part which seems like the "no brainer", since it's "only tracing", but it's very important to have a steady hand here, becuase every little movement impacts the entire look/feel of the drawing. Of course, everything can be edited later on the computer, but I would really have a finished product in the form of linework before it hits the editing software. I use a Pilot 0.4 point pen to trace over the pencil lines very carefully, after which I use my trusty eraser (remember him?) to remove what's left of the pencil work. In some cases, this is a heartbreaking experience

Lineart
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This is my favorite part, where I consider the drawing to "come alive". I use the same pen as before in order to thicken certain lines, leave others thin, to strengthen the outlines and to differenciate between the base figure and the details of clothing, hair, facial features, etc. In some cases I use a stabilo 0.4 fine point for this stage too, which has a thicker texture are larger ink spread. If I have large black areas I sometimes use a black marker.

Base coloring
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After I get the linework onto the computer, I use the Gimp to start coloring (or Photoshop when I'm on Windows). I create a layer from the linework and make sure the layer properties are set to "Multiply" with another white background layer. I then create separate layers for each color underneath it by using the magic wand tool on the lineart layer, enlarging the selection by one pixel, and spilling some color on a layer underneath it. Enlarging the selection area makes sure I won't get any white/grey pixels between the color fill and the lineart.

Highlights and Shadows
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This is usually the final step for me.
I use plenty of methods to do coloring, sometimes I use the brush or airbrush tool, but in this case I used a method called "Cell Shading", by selecting areas (usually with the path tool although it depends on the size of the area to be shaded) to be highlighted or shadowed and filling them with color. I chose this method for this specific drawing because I was going for a "Gorillaz" style effect, and the comic characters which act as the visual representation of the band are colored in this method, with very basic and minimal cell shading, if any at all. If it wasn't for this, I'd probably be all over the place

All done! If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them here, I hope to be able to do this with some of my upcoming drawings as well (hey, this stuff is educational for me!)

Liron