In this video you can see how I made my hamster with strawberry illustration. As usual I am working digitally using Clip Studio Paint EX.
When making an illustration my process is like this: I first make a few sketches. For this illustration I had no idea at first. Actually I sat down and didn’t know what to draw, so I just started to scrible. After a few sketches I came up with the skecth for this hamster. (Honestly, I don’t know how, after drawing circles this happened. :)
I liked it so I decided to move on to the second step and that is detailing and cleaning up the sketch. Once I did that I switched from the pencil tool to the pen tool in Clip Studio Paint and inked the illustration. I have put the lineart on a new empty layer. I tried to make the lines with one move, sometimes repeating a section over and over again.
Once the lineart was done I moved on to coloring. First I have colored in the whole hamster. I need this to ensure that no empty spots remain under the lineart for example. It is also easier to color this way without running outside of the character. I also use the pen tool to put down the base colors and to add shadows and highlights as well. The pen tool is good for this job because it has a 100% coverage, it doesn’t leave opaque/transparent areas like a brush.
I have added a white outline around the hamster. I did this because I would like the illustration to look good even on darker t-shirts. A white outline will make the design pop on those dark clothes. I have a video on how to add an outline to your drawing in CSP.
You can choose any color for your outline by setting your foreground color to whatever color you like.
After I have finished my hamster illustration I have saved the design as a transparent png (hiding all background layers first) ready to be used.