February MOTM: Rain bringer painting process // nsfw

download the attached .zip below to access the process pack for february's monster of the month piece; it contains 16 pngs and 1 gif!

as already mentioned, i couldn't really decide on just one pose for this painting--i really wanted to draw a close-up of some good ol' thick monster tongue licking pussy, but i also wanted to show off the rain bringer's design so the pose shouldn't obscure her too much. hence the sketches for the larger panels where you get a better view of her design, to which i added some ideas for close-ups, plus a shot of the human girl's face because you know me--i love showing how much the human is enjoying themselves with their monster bae. before i knew it i had several sketches that looked really nice together and so i decided that instead of choosing just one of them i could put them together into a little mini comic.

this also meant that instead of spending XX hours on just a single painting i spent the same amount of time on several smaller drawings, each of which are simpler in style and execution (otherwise i would have had to spend six times as much time on it lol). i absolutely don't mind, i love this kind of clean and scaled back look. it's a delight to draw in a quite relaxing way, and comes out looking so soft and ... gentle? 

rather than doing a super detailed and precise lineart with a tiny brush, i used a somewhat larger brush to draw a less detailed lineart. i changed the lineart layer setting to 'multiply' and immediately lowered the transparency quite a bit. for the sake of convenience i put my concept art of the rain bringer in the corner so i could reference it and pick colours from it as i was adding the basic flat colours and some big basic gradients. this was really the only time i used the lasso select + airbrush method for this piece; the rest of it was coloured with irregularly shaped and roughly textured brushes.

i added the darker patches of her fur, the pale gradients of her hands and belly, and the pale patch on her forehead. i also coloured her tail, added the basic colours of her mouth, and of the rain-like tears dripping from her eyes. using a small brush and both darker and lighter hues, i added a hint of texture to her body--just a few strokes here and there to indicate fur. at one point i changed the human's hair colour from a blue-ish black to a brown-ish black, just to make it easier to tell it apart from the rain bringer's body. as for the rain bringer's cloud-like hair i wanted it to look quite stylised, so i didn't 'burden it' with too many details or too much rendering.  

in fact, the basic colouring of this piece in general was actually quite simplistic and minimal. i considered adding a layer of shadows, but i actually really like the 'flat' look of this colouring style. it has such a calm and clean look, especially with a colour scheme like this. it's a bit of a "less is more" thing, especially when there's several smaller pictures besides one another that need to look balanced together. if i had added sharp shadows, highlights, and more details, the total impression might have been more messy and busy-looking. it's partly a matter of personal taste, sure, but as an artist i enjoy working with different styles depending on what i feel like doing at the moment and what i feel would look best for a certain piece. lately i've been really into using linearting and colouring styles that are relatively simple and flat, rather than getting too bogged down doing super-refined linearts and tons of detail.

which, of course, is not to say that i didn't spend some time refining and polishing this piece a bit, once i was done with the main part of the colouring. in fact the next few steps consisted of adding details and cleaning up the linework--just compare steps 09 and 13. last of all i added the rain bringer's necklace and dress--the colour of the dress was on a separate layer which was set to 'multiply' and with the transparency lowered to make it, well, transparent. i made her tears look more watery, added the glint in her eyes, some wetness to her tongue, and the rain droplets dripping from her tail. finally i added the framing of each panel and arranged them into their final order, as seen on the finished painting. 

// art + characters © me.