Commissioned by  gadas at FWA 2019, this scene finds Gadas and his BF Gemini having an affectionate moment on the couch in their apartment after a long day of whatever went on earlier. I don't typically advertise digital commissions at conventions since they take awhile to complete as they compete with my post-con affairs, but I do take them from time to time.

Technical:
Initially I thought this one would be a quickie, as I had drawn Gadas a couple of times already and was familiar with his markings, albeit a few details have changed between then and now. Gemini looked to be an easy job as well, and a photograph of the couch in question lent a ready source of colors to sample for the overall scene.

I should know by now the folly of this assumption. About midway through the flat-color stage, I realized I had positioned the two characters in a manner that made their pose impossible. In short, both characters' shoulders were at the same level, with Gadas' arm mostly hidden behind Gemini's back, and Gemini's shoulder behind Gadas' chest. Also the flat colors of both characters were on the same layer. Whooh.

In order to correct this, I had to go back to the pencil layer and cut it up in order to reposition both characters so Gadas' arm is now visible above Gemini's shoulders, and Gemini sits slightly lower, which his shoulder only partly hidden as Gadas' left arm goes over it. Once I accomplished this, matched the operation with the inks and then seperated the characters' flat colors into their own layers, cutting/moving/rotating sections of the artwork to produce the corrected pose.

After filling in the gaps and closing up the broken linework this caused, I was finally able to begin the shading and highlighting, only to be flummoxed by a silly habit of always doing the shading first. But this being an indoor scene without strong light sources (and having not drawn black-furred characters in such a setting) I was at a loss as to how much shading to apply when I remembered what I had done on "Tight & Shiny"--to just do the highlights first, after which the right amount of shadow would become easier to make out. Once again using Krita's rake_bristle_dry I added highlights and shadows that evoke the impression of hair and fur (as opposed to cel-shading or simple airbrushing), switching back and forth between those and adding lighting effects + details to the backdrop, interpreting the arrangement of the room behind the couch as well as most of the detail objects surrounding the scene. A final round of colored lineart finished off the piece

Digital artwork performed in Krita 4.1.7. 27 layers (not all visible) 29MB in Krita's native KRA file format, 588MB in-application at 3400x2650