A step by step of "The Lost Ones"

I thought it would be fun to do a simple step by step process of how I go about painting. I personally enjoy looking at other artists' step by step process because I'm always able to learn something from them. It's also fun to see them bring their ideas to life. Anyways, I hope you enjoy! 

Step one: The sketch

This is were I set the scene up and get all my proportions, poses, outfits, hairstyles etc. the way I want them to be. 

 Step two: Blotching in colors and shades (aka the ugly stage)

I didn't take a screen shot but what I do before this, is paint all the base colors with no shading. After doing that I then go wild with creating "clipping masks" and start roughly fiddling with the shading (as you see above). Figure out the lighting early on is vital, as you can see above I used yellow and blue. I also begin roughly setting up the background. 

Step three: Blending!

After you've set everything up you can begin blending all of those ugly blotches and start smoothing out the skin and clothes. In this part I also added the eyes and lips for the female on the right. The photo on the bottom you can see how it looks when I start to blend the colors. 

Step four: Hair and more skin blending

Like skin I start off with blotching in the different hair shades, except I use a hair brush instead of a soft brush. I then smooth out the colors (still using a hair brush) and at the very end I add the highlights and smooth out the tips. On the second photo you can see how it looks after the tips have been smoothed out on the red haired female.

Step five: Clothes detail 

With the female on the left I blended the colors, added some texture and detail to her outfit.

Step six: Details

In this step I added eyelashes, eyebrows and skin texture!

Step seven: Background time!

Added clouds and fiddled with the color for awhile.

Step eight: More background 

I blended the colors more on the bottom and added some yellow lighting to it.

Step nine: Light rays and some minor details

I added the light rays with a soft brush (opacity set very low) and added a warming filter. After it was brought to my attention I changed the left female's hand a bit.

I don't remember how long this took me since I never keep track of time when I'm drawing, but it took me over 6hrs to complete. 

If you're interested you can check out my DeviantArt and Facebook for more updates and artwork.