Cheeky Zipper (Process and Timelapse)

This one is another simple pinup illustration, but there were actually a couple of hints I got from this one that were rather useful. As I mentioned in the bishop illustration, trying to sketch while zoomed out was something that I wanted to try in order to see if that helped focus on the larger design first. I did this for this illustration, and unsurprisingly it worked out as intended, meaning that I was focusing a lot more on the larger shapes and pose and design instead of the smaller details. 

Of course, the small details are also important, but they should be worked on only after the main design has been worked out, or otherwise there is the risk of having to redraw hours of work that was incorrectly placed. The more I draw, the more anal I become about finding the perfect design placements for everything before moving onto more detailed work, and I get the feeling that is both making my illustrations faster and better looking in general. 

being zoomed out all the time however is kinda hard for me because of the small size of the cintiq I'm using. On a larger screen where I could have an A4 sized drawing in front of me at all times that would be much simpler, but on my screen the full illustration is tiny unless I turn the tablet to the side, which it isn't intended to do. On paper I find that if I draw anything less than B4 (midway between A4 and A3) working on the illustration is kinda hard, so I'm not sure how to go about this. Drawing small also strains the wrist more which I want to avoid. This is something I want to find a solution for somehow. I may just resign myself to draw smaller and try to resist the urge of zooming in. 

Another thing I've been focusing on lately is the background, and especially how they mix in with the character. I find that planning out a good background is very important, not as important as the character itself since there are more compromises that can be done if needed, but I feel like it's still important to have a solid structure for it. In general, for backgrounds you want to avoid large, attractive shapes and you want to avoid the values mixing in with the main character. A good background can make the character pop out a lot more, while a bad background will make it blend in. Here I tried adding some interesting shapes with the "flames" in the bg, which works okay but I think there's still a lot of things to improve in general.