I drew this fanart image for my friend Amanduur who is a popular webcomic artist. The characters are from a project she has yet to release. You can read her other work on Tapastic. Her stories feature romantic comedy and genre satire.
Process
Base Sketch
I started this piece off with a gesture drawing that I fleshed out. I have been focusing a lot on movement and flow in my pieces. I generally have issues with stiffness in my figures so I've been working on keeping things more relaxed and loose.
Lineart
I did a quick sketchy lineart over the base sketch in photoshop. I define the details and features of the characters in a general sense. I tweak and liquify a lot at this stage in photoshop.
Base colors and shading
I start by coloring under the lines and just blocking out shapes. At this stage, I normally determine my light source and the pallet I am going to use. I messily shade each part of the drawing, skin, clothes, etc. before moving onto the final rendering stage. I do all my coloring in Clip Studio Paint because I like the brush handling in that program. Photoshop is nice for sketching and tweaking drawings, but I personally really dislike photoshop's lack of effective built-in blending.
Painting and Rendering
For full illustrations, I merge color and line layers and then paint on top. This is the stage where I really refine details like facial features, folds, hair, etc. I usually tweak contrast and really deepen where the shadows are.