Louise Saito Process

As promised, the process pics for my latest fanart!

This was a big two day venture and one I am so happy I managed to crank out.

I wish I could have spent more time on lighting as I mentioned earlier but there's only so much you can do.

This piece was started in a unique way for me as I actually began painting the background first to have a visual reminder of what the lighting vibe would be like! I chose something intimate and moonlit so there is one final with the moonlight and another with a normal room light. This was a really great way to start the work I think because while shading the characters I was always thinking about how the background would be interacting with them!

Considering the time strain on this one I think I managed myself really well here, I had to strategise a little when I would start painting certain things and honestly I'm just glad I didn't have to paint skin this time around, doing clothes was much easier (although I would have loved to spend more time on the clothes...).

The background was really fun to make and I used to get really anxious about drawing them, but since delving in some more tutorials and adding some more textured brushes to my collection it has really eased a lot of the frustration. When I first started on Patreon I would look at my art collection and got bored really easily just seeing all these characters on flat white backgrounds, but in retrospect I think I needed that time to focus on getting the hang of characters before diving into background work.

Currently, I am a lot more adept when it comes to drawing people, so now is as good a time as any to start learning backgrounds as characters take me less time than they used to! It's quite complicated incorporating a character into a scene believably so it helps knowing the dynamics of people beforehand, or at least for me; And then when trying to do backgrounds it just helps to have references of what you are trying to make!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy!