Rockabilly Salon Process

Here's my process for this first piece.

1. Working from a reference photo, I draw an old-fashioned salon chair. When working from photos, sometimes it's easier to start with the environment and then draw the characters match it since you can't always tell from a photo what the objects will look like from a different angle.

2. Then I did a rough sketch of the characters. I started with very sketchy stick-figures, drawing the bodies first, heads last. Then I start roughing in the shapes and expressions.

3 - 5. Then I pencil each character's face and body shape, one at a time. (You may also notice that I made some changes to the leftmost character's pose and proportions, lengthening her legs and adding a little more arch. The mesh transformation tool is great for tweaking designs in the pencil stage.)

6. Now that all the characters are there, I pencil in their clothing. I find it's better to wait until I have all the characters worked out before deciding on their costuming since it makes it easier to coordinate the choices if I can see all of them.

7. Inking! Manga Studio has been really great for inking. I like to draw inanimate metally things (like the chair and dryer) with a constant line size marker and then switch to a variable-width pen for the characters. I prefer to work in vector mode for inking since it makes it super-easy to erase overdraws and tweak the placement and weighting of lines.

8. Now color blocking. I know some people like to shade first but I like to do the color blocking first because then I can use the magic wand on the colors to make get quick selections that make it easier to control my shading.

9. Now the first shading, which I think of as "form" shading. It's like ambient occlusion shading. Just some soft, general shading to create a sense of form.

10. Now I start adding special effects details like the crinoline and highlights.

11. Next I change some of the linework to colored lines. Sometimes I make all the lines colored. This time, I just used colored lines on the organic parts (flesh and hair). Then I can add in another layer of shading for cast shadows (subtle in this one since it's not a high-contrast setting). I have to do this after the colored lines because cast shadows need to go in a layer above colored lines and I won't know where the exact edges are until I've got those colored lines in place.

12. Finally, add in finishing details like eyelashes, transparent glass, shadows cast on the floor, and a nice backdrop. And I'm done!