Holiday Card Progress + Downloadable PDF (lots of rambling and progress pics)

Hello hello!

I wanted to have this post done a bit ago, but then I went on a collecting streak to make that archive pdf, and had to catch up with work bcs of my back so it fell under the table. Especially bcs I am kinda bad with writing about my progress and all that. I tend to either ramble or don't know what to say so... sorry in advance XD

I think these progress pics show nicely how the whole thing goes, from sketch to finished piece and how much fiddling with light and stuff changes the mood of a pic between being fully rendered and actually finished. I think the Geraskier pic is probably the most obvious., which is why I decided to use it for the layered psd download. So if you have CSP or PS you should be able to open this and look at the layers, although the color coding I think only works in CSP. As usual, please keep this one do yourself, you don't have permission to profit of this psd or my work.

The knight one sadly has no progress of the rendering of the metal bcs I usually just do this on one layer in one go. You might've seen this on stream when I worked on it. Usually I try to finish the rendering first and then do color tweaking, because if I do that beforehand I will never be done with the piece. A lot of color perception changes when you change for example the background light or color. 

So usually I start with thumbnails, this time around I did know what I wanted to draw for the cards though so I just started with the sketch itself right away. Then I do outlines and flats. When I already know what background I want I  do that right away. Sometimes it's a struggle, when it's a more spontaneous piece or I was focused on the characters first. Which is usually what happens with nsfw stuff XD I draw the characters and then think well, this kind of light would be nice even if it is just a sketch. And then I need a background bcs where does the light even come from? Bane of my existence.
After the background I have more of an idea how the colors should turn out. Often I go on shading the skin and then add an Overlay layer to tweak shadows and warmth. I tend to be bad with picking the original colors so a lot of the color choices change slightly and come more together after the rendering stage. You can see it with the knight piece, I used a gradient correction layer on top to bring out some more of the blues that the metal should have.

But yeah, a lot of this probably makes zero sense if you're not a digital artist. Or maybe even if you are a digital artist XD The downside of mostly playing around with the program myself XD If you ever have questions about how I do a specific thing I am happy to help though. 

Okay, so I think I ran out of steam. Again, if you want to know something more let me know, I am helpless with these kinds of posts XD

Take care and stay safe
<3