Epilogue process (Patreon)

Here's an upcoming Angela's Magic Lesson epilogue in which Angela has turned herself into a vampire. Another effect of the spell is that the lack of blood intake made her younger. She goes to Winifred for help, and Winifred is happy to take on a mentoring, big sister role. As the day goes on, however, she becomes increasingly more doting...

Anyway, onto the drawing itself. As always, I work in a 4.75" square, just so I can fit two epilogues to a regular 8.5"x11" sheet of paper. The rough sketch appeared in yesterday's post, so I can just go straight to light pencils (top left). Then I start inking the characters with a 03 micron and background elements with a 01, also erasing the pencil lines (top right).

After that, I can start shading (bottom left). I don't know what kind of pencil I use, because most of my tools outside of the microns are either really old or I just found them somewhere. The blender continues to be the MVP of the epilogue game. The final physical step is going back in with a 05 and 08 micron to add line weight (bottom right). I'll sometimes throw in some hatching with a 005. I use the 005 sparingly, only because I tend to bear down pretty hard and wear down the tip. That's why I start way up at a 03 for outlines.

After that, I scan the image in greyscale and then switch it to RGB in Photoshop. I colorize the layer, sometimes doing a duplicate layer in a different color and erasing different parts to get a two-tone effect. I'll usually make a third layer with a gradient just to darken the edges of the image and draw more focus to the characters. Then I'll submit it to DeviantArt and write the story.

This is way more than ten bucks worth of work now that I look back at this post. The drawing took me just under an hour I think. The Photoshop stuff goes by pretty quick, but I kinda go nuts on the stories sometimes. Anyway, I'm charging people essentially less than minimum wage for these. Damn.