I drew this holiday picture yesterday of my characters from my comic Behind These Birchwood Walls. I stayed up until probably 3 AM finishing the rendering. The blonde guy is Acario Ambrose and the brunette is Adrian Pembroke. Personality wise, Acario is typically very composed and charming, whereas Adrian is fiery and bratty. Like they say, opposites attract. I'm not really certain exactly what Acario would have put in the box, but whatever it is, Adrian is excited.
Process
Layout
I loosely sketch out the general pose and gesture of the figures. I think this is the most crucial stage of the drawing because it's when you plan general composition as well as get a sense of "movement" in your drawing. I struggle a lot with having stiff figures, so I focus a lot on making sure everything flows and looks natural. In particular, I worked on making sure Adrian's arms had a sense of liveliness as he opened the box.
Sketch
For illustrations I plan on rendering, I do a neat sketch that I color directly under. I don't really ink or line the sketch afterwards, so I try to keep it reasonably tidy. This is where I really start to define the character's faces, clothes, etc. It's important not to lose the flow of the bodies at this stage. I was really happy with the sketch for this piece as I think it captures the character's expressions nicely.
Base Colors + Shading
I decide my color pallet at this point. I drop down colors underneath my lineart. Once I'm happy with the pallet, I go in and start to loosely shade each layer of the drawing (skin, clothes, etc).
Rendering
This is the final stage of my illustration where I merge the lines and base colors and begin painting over them to polish off the drawing. I fix minor mistakes and tweak the lighting at this stage.
