A Creative Process - RIP photo

I thought it would be neat to start capturing and posting my artwork at the different drawing stages. This picture has a lot of meaning, so what a good way to start, right?! Let me know what you think!

Stage 1: Proportions and scribbles

I start off by quickly drawing some base proportions, typically in shapes like spheres and boxes, and scribbling around figuring out where exactly I want the direction of the drawing to go. Then I play connect the dots to put all of the shapes together.

Stage 2: Color Palette

Next I pick a group of colors to set a "theme" for the picture. In this case I wanted to portray peacefulness, so I chose a calm forest palette. Then I roughly place where these colors will go, again looking to find the feel of the piece.

Stage 3: Clean - up

Next it's time to start cleaning up the shapes. I turn them into organic objects, which in this case are people.

Stage 4: Color!

After the picture is drawn, I start with just the basic colors. Filling in the shapes with what shade of color will be prominent.

Once the foreground is done, I move onto the background. Always work with multiple layers, and 1 layer at a time, to avoid confusion.

Stage 5: Lighting and texture

This is where you bring the artwork to life. Start by adding your lights and darks. Again, always working 1 layer at a time. For this particular piece I coloured them in fairly quickly, and used a gaussian blur to smooth them out. Then I played around with the opacity to determine how strong the lights and darks are. I typically use the most layers in this stage. After that is done, it's time for texture. To make this photo feel more calm and peaceful, I went with a picture of clouds. Put it on a separate layer and set it to something like overlay, multiply, soft light etc. Play around with it until it gets the feel you are looking for. In this case I went with overlay. To add the finishing touch I added a lens flare. Where the focus is walking the path of life, I needed to make the destination stand out. Adding a small (and only on about 40% opacity) lens flare really pops the focal point of the photo. After all that, you get a finished piece of art!