Morning Nap Walk-through

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My first tutorial Here's a description to go with it:

1: After finding a good reference photo, I sketch in the lineart.

2: I make a layer underneath the lineart and block in the colours with a hard round brush - I coloured the fox on a separate layer to the background.

3: I change the lineart layer to "Overlay" and, on a new layer above the lineart, draw the basic shadows and highlights with the brush from step 2.

4: On a new layer, I used *Mr--Jack's brushes to draw in the basic fur flow.

5: I blur the fur flow and lower the opacity to about 15 to 20%. Sometimes I also change the layer to "Soft Light".

6: Here I merge the lineart, colours and fur flow of the fox onto to one layer and gently smudge it.

7: On a layer above the shadows and highlights, I start to detail the face.

8: Moving on to the neck, ears and legs.

9: I work on the tail and back fur a bit and smudge the background.

10: I lighten up the background by going over it with a large round brush.

11: Using *Mr--Jack's brushes again, I add some texture to the ground. I also draw in some shadows.

12: Here I start to work a little more on the background wall - I add a bit of texture and darken the shadows.

13: I add more detail to the fox's face.

14: After making the fox a bit darker, I draw lots of thin lines on the wall behind the fox and give them a motion blur and Gaussian blur.

15: Using a mixture of different brushes I work on the ground some more. Using a large very soft and fuzzy brush I add some light in the top left corner.

16: I begin to detail the fox's fur some more. I draw each strand one at a time using a 3 or 4 pixel brush.

17: I finish the tail and start to work on the lower back and hind leg.

18: Still drawing the fur - make sure when drawing fur it doesn't all go the same way – remember the contours of the body.

19: Almost finished the fur. While drawing the fur I change the colour I'm using almost every stroke by using the eyedropper tool in the spot I'm drawing.

20: Finished the fur!

21: I fix up the right side of the ground using an enlarged version of the fur brush.

22: I draw some lines on the ground like I did to the wall in step 14. Now this may look ugly at this stage, but it is very effective!

23: I Motion blur and Gaussian blur the ground lines. I also lowered the opacity.

24: After giving the fur a bit of dodge and burn I add some shadows so the drawing looks less empty.

25: At this stage I flatten the image and fiddle with the contrast and levels - I also mess around with overlay, soft light and multiply until it looks good. I then add a sharpen and/or paint daubs. After adding my signature it's finished!

Brush settings used:
Default round brush, 100% hardness, 10% spacing.
Shape dynamics on. Size jitter 0%, control set to
pen pressure. Minimum diameter 0%. Angle jitter 0% -
control off. Roundness jitter 0% - control off.
Other dynamics on. Opacity jitter 0% - control set
to pen pressure. Flow jitter 0% - control set to pen
pressure. Airbrush and smoothing are ticked.

I use this brush for almost everything. For blocking in colours I simply set the size jitter control to off.


Finished image: [link]

I hope you like it!

*Mr--Jack's brushes [link]
Reference: [link]

Art and character copyright ~CobraVenom