hey i absolutely love your style and admire all the detail you put in your work, would you mind sharing your usual drawing process? Im curious!
Oh wow, thanks so much! It’s always nice to hear that what I call ‘just finish the piece already’ other people call a ‘style’. I don’t know if it’s as noticeable to other people but because each piece takes me so long I feel like my style evolves with each drawing.
When I was starting out I tended to draw an outline first and fill in the piece that way (below is an old WIP from 2017 where you can see the sketched outline). I use Photoshop to draw so this would be the top layer and then I’d block in the colours underneath that on a different layer until I had enough detail that I didn’t need the outline layer anymore.
Now that I’ve grown more confident though, I actually just go straight in with blocking the colours in and then rubbing it out/moving them around until they’re proportional to the reference photo. I’ll make sure the entire canvas is filled in with at least some colour that’s roughly proportional to the actual photo (a good example I have of this is my Spider-man drawing). I don’t spend too long on this because the next step I do is create a new layer and proceed to draw over the entire thing. The first layer basically acts as a foundation so I can confidently start to add in more detail and shading.
From there, it’s a process of spending longer than I probably should in the ‘Actual Pixels’ zoom of Photoshop and getting really detailed and then zooming out and realising I’ve spent two hours drawing a tiny section of the picture. It’s a constant battle in my head between wanting to be loose and creative and wanting everything to be perfect. I think this is largely why the style of the backgrounds in my drawings vary so much because I can be looser and do whatever I’m feeling in the moment. These backgrounds also tend to be built up on at least three different layers and different blending modes, but it’s more of a trial and error than an actual process, honestly.
I think the only other consistent thing that I can tell you about my process that might be of help is the brush I use - this chunky chalk brush is basically all I use along with some other textured brushes to add depth to the background etc.. Oh, and when I’m drawing in details I always do the eyes first so it looks more like the person I’m actually supposed to be drawing - that’s what I was taught you were supposed to do in art class at school anyway.
Anyways, that was a much longer reply than expected but I hope something in there is insightful! I will leave you with this gif of my Captain Marvel piece:
