Fluffy's B-Day; "A Walk in Haunted Hollow's Square"

 Happy Birthday Fluffy!

The strange little mutant rabbit gets his birthday (Sept 23) tribute piece with a full illustrated piece. This is meant to be a bit of practice for future-Oddity work, by the by, experimenting not only with the mixed media I always do but also with a busy/packed background. If all goes my way, you'll soon see why...but in the meantime I think it's a pretty solid picture regardless. 

And hey...wanna see a step-by-step?!...because you are, right now,

1) Undoctured scan 

This is the original scan of the traditional picture. It's inked in basic pen > it's then colored in flats with promarker with bits of shading on leaves and and background elements with stabillo colored pens > a thin layer of yellow ink is applied on top to give this picture a warm gradient from the start > purple tombow and fabre castle markers are used to shade it > colored pencils are used to highlight the lighting from the shading and gel pen used to outline the definitive lighting > a bit of reinking from the og pens and some touch ups and you have the finished picture, now scanned!

2) Shading 

 Doubling+multiplying the layers is essential so the details of the traditional line work come out harder > details not wanted from the original scan, such as morphing or contortion of the picture under the materials, is digitally edited out > shadows used to distinguish the art from now on are added along with the lighting/highlights for the pic > as with all my illustrations, even though the picture is now digital media, I use only the colors from the original scan instead of picking them from the computer- I think it helps the art feel grounded in it's og trad colored roots that way.

3) Reink/Touch up 

 Reinking the outlines > a solid shade of black is kept consistent throughout all the lines for the piece > og colors and highlights apply on top, blended into the shadows.

4) Re-resaturation/finalization 

Experimentation time! Here we play with all kinds of brightness, saturation and highlights, which do alter the original picture's colors > his is because I'm trying to make the picture look older than it actually is (think the colors seen in vintage Halloween cards and posters) > I end up playing a lot with the extreme saturation and extreme de-saturation of the colors here.

And- we have the final result. The digital/traditional elements blend as I want them to and the altered color palette +look of the piece is set in place. 

Thank you Fluffy, for helping me out here :)