(This was posted on my Patreon & Ko-fi Oct 1 2023)

Very simplified step by step on how I make these kind of artworks.

As for the most, the first step is the sketching phase. First, I’ll sketch a really blobby sketch with teal on a light grey blueish background. Then I’ll start to look for references and create the final sketch. Then I’ll start to block shapes and colors, I’ll use the sketch as my reference point. This usually can take anywhere from 5 - 30 layers to do. Sometimes I’ll leave the sketch as a really really transparent layer on top of everything. (Sometimes the color blobs are the sketch and lineart comes after it! My workflow is kinda a mess...)

Final linework always has its own layer (for this piece, I accidentally merged shading and line layers ;_; it happens way too often!) the same thing goes with the shading. Shadows have their own layers as to light. The white lines I usually do around the characters also (mostly, sometimes it goes with the lineart layer) has its own layer. Due to my computer being super old and slow, this is the phase where I merge everything and save it as a separate file from the original. So, it kinda resets my layer count.

When everything is merged, I start to add more details, like flower anthers, more shadows, light thingies, eye glimmer etc.

The final phase is texturing, which I do with brushes and texture files like shown above. Then I’ll import the file to a simple frame, which has my watermark and those @ usernames, flatten and resize it for the web (longest dimension is never over 3000px and shortest is max 1000px). I usually do one more layer over it and use the sharpen feature to make it less scruffy.

… And that’s how it’s basically done!