A friend commissioned me to draw a RWBY fan art piece. Total time to draw this, from thumbnail sketches to final touches, took me 32.5 hours over several weeks. This is how I went about making that image.

1. I began with roughly 3 hours total of sketching thumbnails. Most of them were simple white-gray-black compositions, purely shape and value. If I could get a good composition with just those two parameters, then the rest of the drawing process would be that much easier.

2. I picked the six best thumbnails, redrew them larger and slightly more detailed, and had my friend pick one out. We went with this particular one for the impact of the characters and the giant scorpion coming straight at the viewer. That, and it allowed for a fairly detailed rendering of Ruby and Sun. Sorry Mr. Scorpion, you can be the star of the show next time.

3. The next step was doing a full-sized rough of the chosen thumbnail. I wish I’d spent a little longer on Sun and Ruby in this scene, I had to adjust Ruby’s pose slightly later.

The full-size rough colored.

4. With the rough complete, I duplicated the file, flattened the rough (to give Photoshop an easier time), and began the main line art. Initially I used a 7-point hard round brush; it turned out to be too large and clunky, I reduced it to a 5-point brush.

Remember I said I wished I had worked on Sun and Ruby further before starting the lines? This is it. My guiding sketches were not developed enough, and I had to detour from the final line art for a bit to get Sun and Ruby fully prepared.

5. I finished the main line art and added details with a 4-point brush, and occasionally a 3-point brush where finer details were needed.

6. This was just past the halfway point, over 15 hours total work put into the piece. Here I added the flat colors. The background is an Angle gradient layer.

7. Once the flats were done, I used the layer FX tab to put a Multiply Gradient over each flats layer, putting a light brown cast over the colors and matching them with the desert background.

After working out the difficulties with the line art for the scorpion’s blood (it was on multiple layers, that just wouldn’t do), I painted the final Screen layers over the scene, added a few footprints and ripples in the sand, and declared it finished.

Final tally: 32.5 hours of time put into this, done over about 3 weeks. I worked on it before and after my job shifts, worked on it on the weekend, put in multiple hours on it each day, and beat my deadline of Feb 28 by 3 days.

Result: I have hard knowledge of what I can and can’t do in a certain amount of time, and feel much more confident and productive.

Keep track of how long it takes you to draw something, and track it over months and years. Your art will improve, your speed at making art will increase, and it will be an immense confidence booster.