Mushroom Lady - upcoming sketchbook cover

New illustration for an upcoming sketchbook~!  Stay tuned for info on that, it's a little different than my past sketchbooks. ;)
Here's a gif of this illustration coming together:

And yes, I straight-up copied this Ryan Andrews color palette. :>

Summer Boys illustrations and breakdown / tutorial

The sun is coming back to Portland and people are coming out of hibernation...!  I got to go to dinner with some good friends from high school last night, and when I got back to my studio, I was super inspired.  I ended up staying downtown 5 more hours to work on a series of Summer Boys!

People have expressed interest in breakdowns/tutorials when I post illustrations, so here's a little information about the method I was using on these pieces~

I recently downloaded this set of Photoshop brush presets from JP Vine for the animation storyboarding I've been doing this year. (I love it -- highly recommended!) For these illustrations I used 2 presets from the pack: [BLACK] PENCIL and GRAPHITE POWDER.  The rest was drawn with the good ol' Photoshop pencil tool.

 So here's the line art, just drawn with that brush preset [BLACK] PENCIL (7 pixels).  Loose, gestural, imperfect, and zoomed out at 50% for most of it.

 On a layer below the line art, I used the pencil tool to roughly trace the interior of the figure with some color.

On a layer above the color layer and below the line art layer, I used the [BLACK] PENCIL brush preset (after increasing the brush to 80 pixels and selecting a warm gray color) to add some shadows.  I kept the brush strokes large and a little abstract, trying to mimic what I do in my sketchbooks with the Pentel pocket brush pen:

 Next I added a layer above the color and shadow layer but still below the line art called "texture".  I used the GRAPHITE POWDER brush preset (increased to 1300 pixels) to add some texture all over the illustration.  Then I set the layer mode to "color burn" so it only affected the colored areas and the background stayed completely white.

Ta-da~~~~

Illustration process breakdown - color blocks and interior line art

Hey, all!  I've been experimenting with a new style recently, and I wanted to make a post breaking it down for anyone interested in the process:

The main difference between these illustrations and my usual style is that I don't start with line art; the figures' defining shapes are mostly separated by contrasting colors, and I only use line art, sparingly, for interior details.  

Here's one figure from start to finish (all done in Photoshop):

 Loose sketch, just using the pencil tool

 Tighter drawing, still just using the pencil tool

On a new layer set to "multiply", I use the pencil tool and trace the main shapes with different colors, then fill them in.

 Here's how that looks when I hide the guiding sketch layer and set the colors' layer to "normal"

Next, I add line art on a new layer with a lightly textured brush.  I use a reddish tone because I like how it looks compared to just plain black line art.  I use the fewest lines possible; just clarifying sections that overlap, like this guy's armpit and a few wrinkles in his clothing, plus his face.  Rather than outline his front leg overlapping the back, I mute the colors in his back leg to create the illusion of depth.

 Here's what the line art looks like when isolated

On a new layer, I add a texture to the figure.  I select all, then subtract the negative space, so I just have the entire figure's outline selected.  I use a textured brush to add a marble-y desaturated blue.  This is what the layer looks like when isolated.

 ...And here's what it looks like when set to "color burn" and 70% opacity over the colors layer but below the line art layer.  It affects dark colors more than light colors, so I noodle with opacity and sometimes darken the texture effect over light sections, like his skin and socks (which still end up having less of that textured look).

I select the entire figure again, expand the selection by about 20 pixels, invert the selection, and fill the background layer with a color I like.

Ta-da! :D