It's this time of the year again! I am in holiday mood since, like, 15th of November, which makes drawing Christmas-themed animals totally apropriate :D
A little step-by-step below.
Total time spend: around 2 hours.
Tools: Wacom tablet and Paint Tool SAI
First off, a sketch. It's a dik-dik, a cute mammal I recently saw somewhere on youtube and decided it will be a prefect model! Go check them anywhere, they are just little balls of joy on thin legs <3
Added some holiday accessories: lamps, Santa's hat and holiday wreath- there's nothing that says 'Christmas!' more!
Sketch is lined, lines are cleared and looking smoooooth. Notice no lamps here- I still had no idea how I'll make them
Solid colors. Decided to give dik-dik a natural color and the accessories classic red/green.
At this point I started shading. It's a looong process, that's why I skip it here and go straight to the lamps! Don't worry, the shading process will be shown on the gif picture at the very end of this post.
It was the most time consuming part. Not because of actual DOING the lights, but figuring how to make them. Phew. I did them as little commas over the lineart layer, and decided to make them in 3 colors- the yellow really brighten up the picture!
I made a blurry dots of color under the lights to make them... well, work. I mean, they are lights, they need to shine, at least a little.
Also finished eyes here, they were the fun part as always
And finally, I added a round-ish, simple background, gave the lines some color to blend better and added few color effects all-over the picture. Enjoy!
A quick gif showing the whole process (with the step-by-step shading yay!)
And yes, I have moved the front leg a little between sketch and line phase c:
What do you think? What can be improved? What should I draw next?
It's my first drawing since May, but don't mind it while giving critique C: