Step-by-step // Commission - Fred (Patreon)
Content
1. Rough Sketch
Just like the usual, I start with very loose and rough sketch to determine the pose, proportion, and flow of the drawing.
2. Lineart
And then I clean the rough sketch into a more visible the figure in lineart, but sometimes the flow are way too off while doing lineart, in favor to cleaner sketch, it often doesn't look similar and looks messy.
I admit I'm taking a lot of time just for sketching, its very hard to visualize a 3D form by using lines, that's why I often skip making details when doing lineart.
3. Silhouette
Next step is to draw a silhouette out from the previous sketches, I fixed the general flow to make it as initially desired. I do this to save time.
4, Sculpting
Here is the most important part: sculpting the form out of silhouette & previous sketches, using very low luminosity and low contrast, using grey and dark grey.
This way I can focus on the general shape that I desired, and having a clear vision of the form that I want to paint. Basically I'm sketching right now, but with different approach, rather than using lines from lineart, I'm using values.
5. Details in Black & White
Once I have a clear vision of every bits of the drawing, getting clear vision of the shape and the form from previous step, I use a stronger brush to basically details out everything.
6. Adjustments & Polish
Lastly, I adjust the colors and put more details, this time I'm doing masked & non-masked version of the character.
I paint the head & the furs manually from the scratch, i repeat the same method earlier; sketch > silhouette > low contrast shading > details
7. Finalizing
I adjust a bit more, adding more colors, organize the layer so its easy to toggle to make alternative versions of a drawing.
I hide the non-masked head and leave some parts visible, by using layer mask.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There you have it, that's the method I use when I do my artwork. There still has a tons of flaws on it, but after years I'm more than comfortable having a workflow like this, it has different methods and different steps from other artist.