I then worked on the hands and clothes; you could either do these both on one layer, or each one on a separate layer, on top of the sketch. After finishing all that up, the sketch was then not really visible. The sketch layer was therefore hidden and everything else was merged into one layer. You should always merge layers together when you have finish your work on every layer - that way you can save a huge amount of calculating capacity. However, in order to have some kind of backup, I saved jpegs for this piece every couple steps - but that’s up to you.
Step 4 :
The background needed to support the picture whilst not becoming a key focal point. The colouring had to be bright and strong to achieve for the whole scene that summery look which I described earlier.
I started with a rough, green area that was to later on display trees and bushes (Fig13).
(Fig13)
I filled this area with darker and lighter shades of green; using a brush I created myself very easily (Fig14; see Fig15 for the settings).
(Fig14)
(Fig15)
Finally, I erased some parts of the edge of the green area using the same brush as before. To achieve depth of field I used the Gaussian blur filter on the trees (Fig16). Behind those trees a Ferris Wheel was depicted to signify the name and action of the picture. Of course, the Gaussian blur also had to be applied here.
(Fig16)
The lowest layer held the sky and a few clouds. Both were sketched only roughly.
Step 5 :
I can never really stop working on a character - there is always something to improve or change. A useful way to do this is to create a “correction-layer”. On that I can then, for example, change the light beam in the corner of an eye, or change how the T-shirt falls. For a nice finish I gave her a hair band with green dice, which creates a nice contrast to her red hair (Fig17; see Fig18 for the final result).
