This week I made a digital painting using my computer and bamboo tablet. I’ve been looking to improve lately with that medium so I thought that making some more space-art would be a fun way to do so. This time, however, the crew (Michael and GG) aren’t in space, they’re underwater!
To be more specific, they’re on a planet covered in deep oceans. Michael is scanning a species of seaweed while GG whirls around in the water.
Below are my process pictures and the steps I took to paint the scene. I used the art program Paint Tool Sai.
Step 1: Rough Sketch

First I made a really rough sketch of the general idea and shapes of the drawing.
Step 2: Linework

After the sketch I created a new layer to draw the lines. I also made the sketch transparent to make it easier to draw on top of.

Here’s the finished linework.
Step 3: Background

After linework I created the background using a couple of different brush textures. I imagined the environment to be a deep, expansive ocean, and a little mysterious.
Step 4: Coloring the Foreground

I wanted to experiment with the textures a little bit so I chose a brush that looked kind of like pastel or crayon.

This is what it looked like after most of the coloring. This was the most time-consuming part of the whole process XD.
I tried very hard to fit the colors to the background/environment and learned a lot, I think. For example, what is brown over a white background looks orange when over a blue background!
Why? My guess is that the way we see color is very much based on the lighting of the environment surrounding it, rather than the true color.
I just realized now that the tanks kind of look like hot dogs. Let’s move on.
Step 5: Finishing Touches

I made quite a few small changes to finish up the painting: I changed the color of the lineart to match the colors a bit more, colored in the bubbles, added some more rays of light, cleaned up edges, and blurred some of the plants in the background to create depth. And, of course, I put a little signature on the bottom. 🙂
Overall this was very fun to draw/paint and I hope to do more digital art in the future. Thanks for reading!