Drawing in Stages

Last week I was challenged by designerotter to go through the various stages of how I draw a cartoon. With Cincinnati Pride being this weekend, I decided to do a new design for a tee-shirt to wear. This cartoon is what I came up with. I put the various stages in an animated GIF.

The first thing to do obviously is get an idea. I loved the rainbow kilt from the 2010 shirt, so I used it again, but this time with a spin a friend coined "Barilyn Monroe."

1. 1. The first thing is the general sketch. Done in pencil to put the basic shape in place, along with general positioning and proportion.
   
   
2. 2. The second step is to add more detail to the sketch, filling in specifics such as facial features, muscle definition, and patterns. It's finalizing the sketch.
   
   
3. 3. Next, I use a Sharpie marker or a finer point art marker to go over the sketch. The bigger part of the body is usually done with one marker, facial features are done with a very fine point marker. I erase the pencil marks after inking the cartoon.
   
   
4. After the basic ink outlines are done, I start adding more details, like coloring in the beard and adding the chest hair and other body fur. The chest hair and arm/leg hair adds depth to the image. This is usually the final image before I scan it into the computer.
   
   
5. After scanning the image, I start coloring in Photoshop. I add the base colors first, the general colors for each part of the cartoon -- flesh tone, clothes, etc.
   
   
6. Once the base colors are on, I start the shading process, which really gives the cartoon depth. I either add the colors, going just a darker or lighter shade of the original. Alternately, I can use black/white with some very light opacity, which often creates the same effect and allows more uniformity in the shading lines in single strokes.
   
   
7. After shading is done, I usually start filling in empty spaces with gradient shades or patterns I need. If there are no background pieces, a simple gradient background is added to give it some additional color. In this case, I just filled in the grate he stood on with a pattern.
   
   
8. Lastly, instead of a background, I put in the word "Pride" by cutting/pasting the image from Comic Life for the lettering, then putting a rainbow gradient behind it.

There are better pics of it, but I transferred the design to a tee-shirt iron-on and put it on a yellow tank to wear to the Cincinnati Pride Parade. I have pics to put up, but still need to resize them and such. There are better pics of the shirt, but I took this one quickly before heading out to the parade.