Waitress Step-by-Step

Step-by-step process of this deviation.

_{(Haven't done something like this before...and since I have free time (for now), I thought, "Why not?" Maybe someone might find it useful. This is, however, not intended to be an in-depth tutorial and this is by no means the only way to go about making artwork. It's just the way I do it. Here goes...)}

1. I sketch out my drawing in blue lines. Nothing really detailed, as you can see.

2. I then scan my drawing into my PC then start inking it on Photoshop with a combination of the Brush and Pen tool. As you can see here, her socks seemed to have disappeared...I decided to just make her have full dark-toned stockings. The sundae was digitally traced off a photo.

3. Up next: Flatting. I usually fill the BG with a neutral color because coloring on a white BG hurts the eyes (well, my eyes, at least). Each flatted element of the image is kept on separate layers. So flats for the hair go on one layer, flats for the skin another, etc.

4. I start shading in the shadows with a hard round brush.

5. I then colorize the lineart. This is just a style preference I use for my artwork. It gives it a softer look, in my opinion, as compared to how it looks when the lines are all black.

6. Afterwards, I start rendering the highlights. I keep the highlights minimaL, they're just little accents to your piece to give it more dimension and depth. Besides, overdoing the highlights tends to overwhelm the midtones until they sometimes disappear, and your image ends up looking flat.

As for the ice cream, yes I traced a photo for the outlines, but I didnt paint over the picture or anything. When I colored it, I put the photo and the artwork side by side and I rendered the ice cream manually, taking reference from the photo. Compare the photo with the artwork here.

7. Time to put special effects! I put a drop shadow effect on the character, fixed up the BG a bit, then added adjustment layers on top (levels, hue/saturation).

And there you have it!