Creating process: drawing with pencils and Photoshop

I would like to share with you here my working process. I have done this llustration based on a story of friendship with a squirrel as the main character during an online course “Illustrating Children’s Books” with Lilla Rogers and Zoe Tucker. (www.makeartthatsells.com)

At the beginning I draw on a cheap 80g paper for printers which gives me a lot of freedom: doing this I am not afraid to make mistakes! And when I make a mistake - I simply can scan my drawing, erase what I don't like, print it and draw on the top!

I like to draw with pencils CARAN d'ACHE (HB, 3B) or POLOMINO BLACKWING

After the black and white drawing is finished, I scan the illustration and open it with Photoshop. I select the layer and in "Blending options" I set "Multiply" . This option makes the white color transparent.

Then I import my scanned texture. I trace a necessary outline with “lasso tool” and then copy this shape from the layer with texture.

So it looks now with texture.

The same method for squirrel.

After finishing with textures I print the image.

Second stage: coloring with color pencils

I use many different colors to make the badger look black and white.

close-up view

and here is a finished illustration!

I scan the image with 600dpi resolution. It gives me a size twice as large as the original one!

I use "levels" in Photoshop to make a white background.

I hope this post was intersting and useful for you. If you have any questions or comments - I will be happy to answer you in my comments or by email.