Psiren Commission, Finished (Patreon)

     Yet again I forgot to do scans as I progressed to make this a step-by-step presentation. I tend to get to drawing and just keep going. Plus, the constant cat interruptions are a bit distracting. To at least give some breakdown... After penciling the whole thing (except the musical notes part), I inked the foreground, using bolder lines on Psiren's outlines, and leaving most detail and shading on the figure uninked. Then I rendered the sky (again, without the musical notes; just the clouds), using stumps and shammies, picking up graphite off a sheet of paper impregnated with a soft-cored pencil. This avoids having to blend out any lines. A kneaded eraser was used to pick out highlights on the clouds. Next, I rendered the figure, the wall, and lastly, the buildings in the middle ground. That left the musical notes, which indicate her psychic ability with music. I used a tracing paper overlay to work out a shape and flow that complimented the composition, then outlined it with a stump to get a soft, gray line. A kneaded eraser was used to pick out a lighter area within the outline, and a shammy smoothed and blended this area. Then came the fun part: musical notes. Soooo many musical notes. I brought up reference of sheet music on my laptop so I wouldn't have the same two or three basic notes repeated endlessly, and lightly penciled them in, purposely breaking the "bubble" here and there to avoid a rigid look. The notes were then "filled in", blended and softened with stumps, and cleaned up with a kneaded eraser. Lastly, the net sleeves were inked, and voila: finished commission.