"Waking moment"

Some time ago the lovely Karen Lusted asked me to be a part of an artbook anthology that she was putting together. The artbook, Secret Colours, was not only going to showcase artwork from UK artists but also show steps in the image-making process.
I asked people on the Sweatdrop forums and on Deviant Art to come up with keywords or catch-phrases of what I should draw and later set up a poll for the final decision. The winning concept was "Waking moment".

I started out with doing a few rough thumbnails to explore the composition. After that I did a rough pencil in light blue over which a tighter pencil drawing was done as the final line art. The blue lines were easily removed in Photoshop, as described here.

The digital painting was done in Photoshop. Here's a small GIF animation showing different steps in the painting process.

Secret Colours can be ordered directly from Karen Lusted at karen_lusted@hotmail.co.uk. There's some more information about the book, including preview photos in her DeviantArt journal.