Space Monkeys - Illustration process

Here's an illustration about space monkeys. For this post, I thought I'll share the process behind this illustration.

This illustration is a digital work. With digital, I tend to be very linear. So after a heap of thumbnails (remember they're like your vitamins - good for you!), I finished with this tighter pencil version. This is in red, I work in normal graphite pencil ... I'll explain later.

I digitally ink on the top of it. I used to be a purist with traditional ink, but when I discovered the range of marks I can get from Corel Painter, I couldn't help but change. And that's why the pencil drawing is red, so I can see better when I ink on top. Digital inking also makes it easier to separate the linework on different layers.

Finally, back into Photoshop for colouring. I prefer flat colours, like ukiyo-e, but in this piece I added touches of shadow to make it pop more. This one took me ages to get the colours right, until I realised the planet had to be red (initially, the space costumes were pink!).

The final piece:



Process shots:




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