Queen of Swords Walkthrough

A painting done for the Eatpoo tarot project. Definitely check it out, there are a ton of brilliant artists working together in this project. NOTE: The image is © Katherine Dinger. I post the walkthroughs for general reference to give other people a glimpse into how I work, they are NOT here for you to copy! Thank you.

Step 1: Line drawing and basic values put into place. I used a thin, round brush on 100% opacity for the outlines - however, I also set the size of the brush to "pen pressure" to give me varying widths without losing opacity. To fill in the colors, I work with the same brush only larger. Its painted on another layer above the linework and set to "multiply" so that the lines show through.

Step 2: Beginning to build up background texture with custom brushes, colors on the figure are slightly enriched and the face/legs are painted in.

Step 3: Starting to define the folds and shadows of her suit. Highlights on her boots.

Step 4: The books and the sword are painted in. Notice I'm working over the top of my black lines for a more painterly feel.

Step 5: I'm going in with a fine brush to create cracks in the backgrounds surface, you can see the result up close here. This is a really easy way to create interesting texture. A rough dark line combined with a highlight on its edge creates an instant crack.

Step 6: The last couple of steps I have worked on refining her suit, and now I'm to a point where I'm pretty happy with it. I start playing with ideas for the title and put some outlines around the figure to tie her into the graphic nature of the border and the background.

Step 7: I didn't like the title. ;)

Step 8: I still didn't like the title, muahaha... but now we're talking! Woo!

Step 9: The books needed some more cleaning up so I worked on that. But after that? Complete!