to see full-size file, click here: http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j.....ep-by-step.jpg

on this commission, the client asked if they could get progress shots of the piece as it was worked on. i obliged, and decided it'd be interesting to put together a how-i-paint kind of thing. my digital painting technique, over a couple years of experimenting, has come down to this:
1. paint in sai
2. flats over inks with multiple layer shading
3. merge everything and paint together

a lot of people love to work on many, many different layers. i try to keep things as simple as possible. i try to keep things to one or two layers, because it's more natural to have things blending into one another, and more like traditional real-media painting.
shading on multiply layers is best for one reason, typically, for me: markings for anthro characters. characters with small detailed markings, stripes, gradients, and anything generally more complicated than a one or two color character, is much, much easier to paint when you put down all the colors flat, use airbrush or pen tools to do markings/stripes/hair color/etc, shade OVER that with a multiply layer, and then merge and continue painting details.