Dragonqueen - Process

So I tried to remember to save screenshots while I worked on this one. :)

 

Started with a rough sketch, using a soft grey color brush, set to maybe 80% opacity. You should be able to build up the lines just like when you use a light sketch pencil. Digital work just imitates natural media, after all.

 Once I'm fairly happy with the linework, and I start noticing I'm zooming in and trying to piddle with details, I make a new layer and switch to a more hardier pen type, opacity ~90%.  Zoomed up it looks so sloppy! XD

Wanted to make this more than just a pretty girl, so I modified the canvas a bit to make room for the next thing....

Sketching the "big" Alexstraza.

Painted the BG a warm neutral-grey color, and started laying out flat shades for the figure. In this screen I cheated a bit and did a little pre-emptive shading just to make sure I liked where my light source was going to come from.

More flat colors. These are all mid-tone base colors.

Closeup of the figure in flat colors.

Mooore flat colors. Right now I have all of these on their own layer, but after a while that gets tedious and it's time to consolodate.

Starting to paint the dragon in the background. She's done all on one layer, with one or two brushes.

Messing with layer values (overlay, multiply, etc) to see how I'd like to set the dragon in the background. 

More color shifting, and some more dragon details, so that she matches the figure.

Going back to the figure, starting to shade and define the flat areas. Since I'm kind of sloppy with my colors, I keep the separate layers for this and lock the layer's transparency.

Details and textures on the leather/mail bikini. I took one of my scatter brushes and added a texture to it, through a leather pattern found on CGtextures.com. I defined the file as a "Pattern", then applied it to the brush.

More details. Shaded the textured parts by setting the layer to Multiply, and shaded underneath it with a duplicated layer that had nothing but flat color on it to start.

More details. Still have a ton of layers, and they got to be a huge pain at this point. Ready to flatten.

Flattened the figure (but not the BG) and added some final touch-ups and global shading for definition.

Closeup of the details on the figure. Done! :)