August step-by-step (Patreon)

Thumbnail. I try to do thumbnails for bigger pictures so I have an idea of where I'm going with the composition/colour scheme. I wanted Austen and Sunati to be mainly warm reddish colours in contrast with a cool greyish background, but I also wanted the umbrella to be one of those ones with a blue sky on the inside. Maybe I just shoudn't picked one of these ideas not both.

I wasn't sure if I wanted a kiss on the lips (more romantic) or a forehead kiss (forehead kisses are so warming~)

Decided on a forehead kiss because I'm not sure if I've drawn a forehead kiss for these two yet?

Also grabbed a 3D umbrella to use as a reference from the default Clip Studio library

Tightening up the sketch a bit.

Started inking, then decided that my sketch had lost some of the feeling from the original thumbnail, so went back to the sketch and made a few changes. This happens to me a lot. I often feel that as I get caught up in doing details, the lines/colours lose something raw that was in the thumbnail/original sketch. I'm trying to work on this - mostly by looking at the original sketch as often as possible.

Lines done!

Wasn't quite sure what I wanted for the background. Started with three layers - a light grey for the background, a darker grey for silhouettes on top and then an overlay layer on top of that with oranges/purples/blues airbrushed lightly over the crowd to create a bit of colour variation.

I thought the background was looking a bit boring so I started painting over it using the brush I've attached (I also attached the lineart brush though I don't think that's a particularly unique brush). It ended up creating this thick oil-paint feel and the colours resemble an oil slick a bit. This wasn't intentional, I wasn't really sure what I was doing, or what I wanted the background to look like. Hooray for happy accidents :)

Flats added to the foreground.

I mostly used the DAUB square oil brush ( https://www.daub-brushes.com/#home )

Rough colours added. Shadows were added on a multiply layer, then on another lay above that I grabbed colours from other parts of the picture and splotched them on top. I mostly used the attached painting brush.

Cleaning up/adding details. This was mostly painted on one layer (beneath the lineart layer) using the attached brush. I also coloured the lineart (I tend to colour my lineart using an airbrush, then set the lineart layer to multiply.)

And done! More details added, the background was blurred out a bit, and then I spent entirely too much time going "bleeeeeh I don't like the colours, maybe if I use an adjustment layer or airbrush some colours on top using an overlay layer I'll like them better."