Sunlit Veranda started with this sketch supplied by the client (posted here with his permission). He wanted me to take the general idea presented in the sketch and, in a word, "Cutepetify" it. :)
The first step after that was to work out the look of the woman in my style while still capturing the essence of the woman from the client's sketch. Using charcoal pencil on newsprint, I did a number of character design sketches, shown here.
Once that was done, I worked out the general composition and final character design which you can see in this earlier blog post.
Then I colored in the background, which you can see the step-by-step process for below.
I generally save coloring the character for last. (If you think of the background art as the "veggies", the necessary nutritious parts of the picture, then the character is the "dessert", the tasty treat at the end.) :)
