Hey everyone!
I thought it might be fun to show you all how I sketch things out. So, I posted this pic in my other art book when I was doing OC-tober, but I don't think I posted my initial sketch.
What I do is I take a more painterly brush and block out shapes in some tone of gray, then I add some rough details in different tones.
I love doing this because it lets me block out shapes more easily and I can just paint over stuff. I can also work out the shading more easily, so I get a good feel for what things will look like. There's still some changes I end up making further down the process, but the end piece is usually pretty close to the sketch.
I use the same style for covers, but sometimes I throw in a rough pencil sketch on top to get a more detailed sketch, like with the cover for Dreamseer!
For this one, I focused a lot more on getting the lighting, because it was a relatively simple drawing. I wanted the lighting to be more pronounced to make the cover a bit more interesting to look at. There's still some things that were changed/added/corrected in the finished cover, but it was pretty close to the concept sketch.
So yeah, that's how I do stuff! Except for paintings like the one on the cover, I pretty much just use the color block sketching method, but I keep adding details to the initial shapes, then do some clean up until it's done.
Anyway, hope this was interesting! Maybe I'll do some more posts on my process at some point, haha.