Zora The Geek: *Sings* And you know my name is Simon! And I like to do drawrings! ^

Instead of just posting my new drawing, I thought I'd post the original up until the finished product as well as a description of how I...do...artsy...stuff...thing...since a lot of my friends ask me how I do it exactly. Eh, anyways, I should start off by saying that the woman in this drawing is none other than Princess Allura from the 80's cartoon (and one of my favorites at that) Voltron: Defender of the Universe! I used to be a big fan of Allura, thinkin' she was all strong, baddass and cool for being one of the Pilots and all.........aaand now that I watch it again, she's not QUITE the "Baddass" I remember her to be...(When confronted with danger, she seemed to swoon more than one of those Fainting Goats), but still, she's still a favorite character from my childhood, so I thought I'd pay tribute to her in this drawing.

Stage 1: Paint Program...Yes, I still use MS Paint. You think that's stoneage, right? Well Yabba-dabba-screw you!! j/k =P I first started teaching myself how to use it about 15 years ago and I just can't seem to part ways with it.

Stage 2: Smoothing and color enhancements. I use Adobe Photoshop 5.0 (now in THAT case, I wish I was more...erhem...updated...) I basically single out the parts I want to work on with the select tool, then I typically start out with a very soft Gaussian blur, and then I use the smudge tool to soften those pixels. Smudging can also really help with hair strands (Setting it on the tiniest brush and the highest settings makes for nice strands) For shading and color enhancements, I use the Burn/Dodge tool or I select the color I wanna' enhance and use the Overlay brush. And if I'm not satisfied with the coloring, I'll adjust it on the Color Balance or Hue/Saturation mode.

Why am I starting to imagine myself with Bob Ross hair?

Stage 3: Background

Hoookay...Backgrounds are NOT my strongest point...I've had a few drawings with backgrounds that I've been satisfied enough with, but not without LOOOOTS of tweaking...and even then, the satisfaction is only slight. So I tend to go with some sort of abstract, colorful background instead, as you can see. Though I sometimes use the layering mode, I mostly just select the area outside of the character with the wand tool. I start off with a nice, strong blur to get some shading and color's going. In the case of this drawing, I once again go to the smudge tool and go crazy, depending on what I feel like doing. Once again, I use the Dodge/Burn tool to help darken and lighten areas to give some variety and adjust the colors with the Hue/Saturation/Color Balance settings. You'll notice there are some "Sparklies", and I'll get to that later.

Are we having fun yet?.....*sigh*, I know. It'll be over soon, I promise. =P

Stage 4: Go random with whatever colors you napkin!!

This is where I just like to experiment with colors. It's not really much. I basically just used the "Variation" tool and selected the settings that I liked, in this case, a lighter tone with some yellows and peachy colors.

Step 5: Oooooh, lookadem' sparklieees! (NO VAMPIRE JOKES!!!)

I do quite like how the last image came out...but I also like to see just how far I can milk these photoshop effects! Whahahaha! So for this one, I obviously brightened it up even more using the Variation tool, and decided: "She's a Princess! (An 80's Princess, no less) More Sparklies!" So for THAT, I use the Airbrush tool, after selecting white (or a reeeeeeally light color) and then using the Color Dodge settings. I use the airbrush instead of the regular CD brush because I can get softer specks of light from the Airbrush. So you basically select the smallest brush and go nuts! Huzah!