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Don't Call Her Frances... — Description
Another character sketch done on a receipt. This time, since I had some time to kill while waiting for my sister to finish with a meeting, I actually got around to inking this one.

I found that when I have projects requiring a specific skill, I need to do a side illustration that allows me to practice that skill. In this case, I have some painting, and I have a lot of inking to look forward to, so gotta keep sharp!

Since I've been doing some Cartoon Network characters as of late, this time around I chose Frankie Foster, from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. (Yeah, yeah, another redhead...!)

I'm concerned with my ability to draw directly on my tablet. I don't have reliable pressure control, so my lines aren't as dynamic as others get to be. That also affects my opacity and flow options, getting stuck with single settings that I have to adjust manually. But if there's one thing I learned about having limited means, it's finding ways to be creative with what I have!

Most of the basic shading was done with brush settings at 50% Opacity, with matching Flow. When I started to smoothen down the gradations, as well as doing direct color painting, it was with a 70% Opacity and less than 10% Flow.

In a change from my other paintings, I actually set up the base color layer first, then worked on the shading underneath afterwards. Normally it's the other way around, but I had the benefit of having scanned lineart first, so doing the color flats was easy to do right away. It still didn't look quite right when it was changed to the Color layer mode over the grayscale shading, so I upped the saturation to where it is now. I also duplicated the lines and colored most of those with the exception of Frankie's eyes and eyebrows.

Still need to tweak my personal workflow, but it's slowly getting there!

Pencils and ink on a store receipt!
Colors on Photoshop CS3 with a Genius G-Pen 450

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and all related characters tm Cartoon Network
Original Art by Jon Mallari