Finished image

So, here's the completed image of these two characters. The lineart has been colored and I've adjusted their heights to the right proportion.

My process

1. First, I doodle on my Wacom in Illustrator. I used to sketch in pencil, then scan, then ink, but lately I've just been drawing straight in Illustrator. I like the control it gives me. Here I've drawn a lovely young lady in a loose-flowing top.




2. Once I like the inks, I export to bitmap and open it in Photoshop. I'll usually do a little clean-up on the lines. The important thing before coloring is "flatting." I select each part and assign it a shade of gray. This lets me select only those areas when I'm coloring later.




3. Spend some time coloring in Photoshop. And, she's done. I'll probably go back and give color to all the lines, instead of leaving them black.

New drawing

Inks (original art):




Color:

Michael

Michael inked and colored

Emma

I know it's been awhile, but I was able to doodle some today on my lunch break. Here's a character I've created named Emma.

Bora Bora Board

I took some colors from a photo of Bora Bora and worked them into this board. There's a few layers of watercolor, too. I think it makes nice wallpaper.

Gandalf

I can't believe I've taken this long to scan this in, but I keep forgetting to do it. Here is Gandalf:

And here is some of the detail: