TGIF!!!

What's up lil' flamerz! This is Robaato, and it's FRYDAYE!!!!

Been up to some mean stuff lately. Getting commissions out of the way, workin' at the new J.O.B., and been getting back to drawing more stuff that I wanted to for the longest. Recently, I've been getting back into drawing Ruby, one of my most well-known and popular OC of mine. And I'm pretty sure you guys seen the post of this image. Last week, I gave you guys a small method to my madness, but this week, since people been asking me, you get a more in-depth viewpoint on how I do things now. So let's go!

1. Here's the base Raw sketch. I did this at work, so I had all the time in the world to get the lines I want. Being in this setting gives me liberty to try new things and be more adventurous, unlike at home when I can get lazy. XD So yeah, throw yo sketch in the scanner, level it out, yada yada.

2. I took the sketch in Painter X and inked it up using the cover pencil. Again, I chose to take my time. What worked with the inking process well is that I already had my lines established and that I don't have to guesstimate when zoomed all in on Painter. Unfortunately, Painter doesn't have a dual-screen mode allowing you to stay zoomed in on one monitor and in full view on the other.

3. Going to Photoshop CS3, I selected all the linework except the eyes, and cut out about 35% of the opacity on them. This is to give my lines a "color hold" look. Much easier method for color holds to me than all that masking and extra layer-making. XD

4. Droppin' the flats. I went ahead of myself and rendered the eyes, lips, and earrings just so I won't have to worry about them later. As you can see, I start my flats in darker tones. Reason being, if I'm having trouble with my palette selections or don't feel like picking colors, I just use a specialized layer (Overlay, Soft Light, etc.) and the color white for my highlights. But in this piece, I picked the colors.

5. Rendering. I took a small soft brush, changing the sizes depending on the strands, and started rendering the hair.

6. Then for highlights, I selected some small zig-zag areas for the shines, threw white on em, duplicated the layer, set the top layer to overlay, and gaussian blurred the bottom layer to a percentage I'm satisfied with.

7. Sexy skin renderin'! First stage of skin rendering, I put the initial highlights, using a soft brush with varying opacities. 

8. Secondary skin highlights. Took a more opaque color and blended in the secondary highlights, giving it a realistic look.

9. Wash, rinse, and repeat! I rendered everything else in the same manner as I did on previous areas, added shines on the jewel, and threw on a purplish-tinted gradient layer over the whole image on 50% Linear Light to give it a variance in depth from the top to the bottom.

That's it! Hope you guys learn from this, and I may get my head chewed off from letting you know the secrets! That's how Bruce Lee got killed.

Rob!