Band Kink (kinky shibari thing)

A drawing for my friend Aidenke, and his character Amy. I've drawn her a few times I think. There must be tags for it.

There are multiple images in this post, if you don't see them on the patreon app, try reloading the page.

I thought I would take a moment to discuss process a little more because I think this is pretty close to an ideal image pipeline. I know that sorta wording makes it sound like a product, but to an extent any drawing still benefits from having a logical process helping you deal with each part of a picture. In this post, you should see images from each part of the process in reverse order.

The last image there, is where we start with the rough sketch. If you get a good fun looking image here, that helps translate to a better looking image in the end. You can mess up or improve things all along the way, but if your initial sketch is poorly planned. then your next few hours are going to be harder than they have to be. You can't be precious about this sketch. This is the time when you should be throwing out or redoing large amounts of the drawing. Heck, it's also the time when you should figure out if you want to do the drawing at all.

Next step can be a bit of a hassle but in this instance, it helped me refine a lot of the elements in this drawing. There's a lot going on, and shibari fans are very particular about how rope work looks. Doing this stage, with the multiple different layers and different colors, helped me figure out the logic behind the clothing.

Next comes lines. This has been a lot of fun for me recently, ever since I changed to a new pen brush.

Having good lines makes the flats a lot easier. You want to get through this part pretty quickly as it can be a little boring. But once you have the flats down, with each item on a different layer, you can adjust the color scheme a lot more easily.

The dark image here, is what I would call a shadow layer. I like to make the shadows using colors that compliment the background. It helps the colors blend into the environment a lot more effectively.

Then, instead of simply turning the flats back on, what I like to do is mask them back onto the shadow layer. So it's like painting the colors back onto the dark shadows. It's a technique reminiscent of renaissance paintings. Though you wouldn't confuse this drawing for a Carvaggio.

Final layer is finishing the lighting with some highlights. Glows. And some gradient maps. This helps the image come together more if your colors seem a little discordant.