1 Gathering all the necessary reference.
This can involve long hours of fruitless but pleasurable searching in my own books ,the libraries or the Net. In this case I was pointed to a site which contained exactly the right sort of clothing and figure which the client asked for .
2 A simple sketch
Although I sometimes use photographs, in this particular case I drew the figures freehand in pencil first, then redefined them in ink.Then it is scanned into the computer and various modifications are made using Photoshop. Here the head of the male was too small so I increased its size fractionally.
3 First tentative strokes
The first rough sketch is printed out onto thin paper with extremely thinned-out lines,sometimes in another colour like blue.This gives me just enough reference to work over but not so much that it shows up later on
4 Final drawing
This was submitted to the client as an e-mail attachment, approved and the final artwork could begin.I traced it down onto watercolour paper to serve as the base for the final painting
