The Rose and Thorn process

Here it is! :)

ok everyone, the first step is the sketches. Thumbnails, prelims, roughs, anything! :) So this is what my first drafts looked like. 

Ok, so when you've got your idea picked out (I kind of decided to do a mix of the two) Now you move on to reference and emotional/facial expression ideas. (here's where it gets FUN!) This is the picture I used to just do the pencil lines. Shading comes next. 

Ok! You are set with that, but what about lighting?! I wanted a double lighting effect with red and green. So I took a picture of myself with double lighting. This is the reference I used to do the pencil shading and the water color.

So! Now that you have all the reference you need to pencil it, then why not DO IT?! I decided to draw on water color paper because I loved the texture it gave my pencils and I also wanted to use water color for my next step in the traditional media process.  

So here are my pencils...

OK, you have your pencils, and thats with the shading and blood (just free handed and guessed what it would look like for blood to drip) But I wanted a more solid tone around the face and hair so here's where the water color paper helps me. Here's where the black watercolor comes into play. Here is also where I put the black ink to fill in the blood on the fingers. I also changed it to greyscale because it took out any unwanted colors that I didn't want in my final.

Alright, now we get to COLOR IT! :) Now, I was pretty torn on whether I should just kind of guess on the shading or if I should really reference this baby. I'm glad I decided to add in this next step because I really think it helped in making the final realistic and three dimensional. I just took the double lighting photo I took before and put a red to green gradient over it to really show me clearly how the light hit the face.  

Finally, here is the final product! I brought the black and whites into photoshop and underneath the lineart I put a solid red to green grad (what you see in the hair and clothing) then over the grad I popped out the bright shines in red and green. I then knocked out the black blood and made it red. Then finally I added in my blood brush splatter around the hand. Then Viola! Done! :)

Thanks for checking this out you guys!!