Step 3: Final Drawing

Now that I have the concept and the pose nailed down I sit down and work out the final drawing. I decided on a kneeling man in a suit as the missing compositional element. Using reference material at this point is crucial to the outcome of your painting. I spent a couple of hours(at least) searching online for adequate reference material. Sometimes I'll shoot reference myself if I can't find what I'm looking for easily enough. I tend to work with actual pencil and paper at a pretty large size. This sketch was done on 11"x14" paper, but it wasn't large enough as I had to tape other sheets to it toward the bottom. I find drawing in the computer really limits me. I can't get nearly as good a line flow with a tablet as I can on a nice large sheet of paper. Here I started off rough with red pencil, then tightened everything with an HB lead..

Step 4: Color Sketch

I scanned the linear into Photoshop and made a lores copy of my file to do a color sketch with. I'm placing the mermaid in a dark aquarium so I chose the upper portion of the painting to be nice and dark with lots of blues for the water. At this point I just want to get a general feel for the color of the entire piece. I don't focus on details, just a concentrate on filling the "canvas" and getting my light sources defined.