Painting in progress

I'm in the middle of another painting, but don't have the usual amount of time to try and get all done in one sitting, so I'm sticking it up here as it ticks along, a sort of WIP/Tutorial type thing. Just to go through, I start of with an incredibly rough sketch (not seen, but the linework tends to have SO MUCH MORE LIFE than the clean line it's not even funny) always drawn on a midgray background, at about 30% opacity, 60& flow hard round brush in photoshop.

I then do the clean(ish) lines you see above. WHY OH WHY? Because then I can a) lock in the design of things and forces me to think things through a lot more but B) because I can flat em in super fast. Much like in comics stuff, when I got through the flatting process it gives me a time to exclusively think about the tone and colours I want. For this I want it to have the overall air in the place of what-wet-fur-smells-like, with the dragons dropped in over it like a breath of fresh air...or an unwelcome draft, depending on your perspective :D

I then press Ctrl Alt Shift E and that makes a flattened clone of the lot, and then Ctrl Alt Shift B (I THINK) to greyscale it. I then paint up a quick value study, so I'm not getting ahead of myself with colour alone.


NOW is the point where those two techniques clash horribly, but I'm in the porvess of figuring out how to marry the two. Either way, from here on I combine the two and make with the pretty. I have 90 mins painting time left, so FINGERS CROSSED I should have something for ye later on.

Wish me luck.

Normal Service will resume shortly.


EDIT:

OK, my eyes have pretty much called it quits for the day. Here's where I'm at so far :D