This week I finished this illustration, which made me more satisfied than the last illustration. This time I paid more attention to textures to make my draw closer to traditional illustration.
I was spending much more time dedicated to studying the traditional techniques and I like to think that even though I'm doing the digital drawing, I am drawing manually. I looked for textures and lines that are closest to manual drawing on paper and I liked the results.
I'm learning constantly and I like to explore more and more possibilities. I'm making a long journey searching for better results.
On my workflow
There are so many different ways to paint a digital drawing by adding textures. After I did some tests, I found this workflow, that's for me it’s been more convincing. Here is just an example that's how you could start if you've been a little lost because, in the beginning, the process of how to begin on digital art could be complex.
1. I started with basic planning of layers, I was doing a different group for skin, hair, eyes, clothes, Etc;
2. I usually importing the sketch image that I'd prefer to do by free hand, decreasing the opacity of this layer. Because of this, I could draw over;
3. on a new layer, I do the Contour or line art and after I finish, I hide the sketch layer;
4. A new layer above the line art, I paint with the basic colors (without Shadows/Highlights);
5. A new layer I add the textures, I always use darker tones than those of the base layer. For each part of the drawing, I have groups of textures pre-selected that I use with Frequency.
6. Beyond the texture layer, I increase some more layers, it's for penumbra, shadows, and refluxes;
7. For choosing the tones that I want for my illustration I use photographs like base and capture each tone with the tool Eyedropper Tool.
8. And last, I work on the background, I Add my signature and I export the format and size for posting.
Translation:Juliane Mesquita
Tania Neiva - Children's illustrator
