Jenny art process

I'm working on some MLAATR fanart at the moment, and I thought this would be a good time to give you an example of my current process for drawing character art.  (I've actually meant to do this for a while now, but I kept forgetting to save my steps as I worked, especially during the lineart process. )

So to start, on the far left I usually do just a rough sketch in GIMP to get a line of action for the drawing.  This isn't very detailed, and usually it is based off an even smaller (maybe a 2-inch) thumbnail I've drawn with pencil on a separate sheet of paper.  Sometimes for more realistic people I will use reference photos I've taken of myself to get the general pose down, but since Jenny is a robot, it's okay if she has kind of exaggerated proportions.

For the next step, I go in on a new layer over the rough sketch and start adding in detail for how I want the character to look in my style.  Usually I draw the body first, then go back and add the clothes on top.

The third image is my revised sketch, I don't like to have too rough of a sketch when I'm importing into Inkscape.  I always use pink for my revised sketches because...I like pink.  These lines are supposed to indicate where I do the digital "inking" in Inkscape, so I try to avoid anything too sketchy, but I usually end up making lots of changes anyway.  When I used to do hand-drawn lineart, I would stop at this step and move to coloring, but it was not nearly precise enough for me so I was very glad when I figured out the method for using Inkscape instead!

For step 4 I import the sketch into Inkscape, which is an open source vectoring program, and I do my lineart there.  Normally I will work in just one line weight when I'm putting down the original lines, and I refine the character design as I'm working since my proportions are usually a bit off when I'm doing my sketching.  I actually still use this process for making the lineart although it is more detailed for this kind of drawing than for a basic cartoon.

Next I go in and edit the lineart to make it look more like it was "inked" rather than drawn on a computer program.  In Inkscape, the lines have a blunt edge unless you manually alter the thickness.  In many of my earlier drawings I stopped at the previous step and went straight to coloring but they are rather lifeless because there's no variation in the lineart.  For this particular drawing I also colored the lineart since Jenny has a green outline in the original cartoon.

Lastly, I save the Inkscape file and import it back to GIMP for coloring.  Right now I am not doing anything very fancy with my coloring as I prefer to use the lineart for dimension and detailing - mostly I'm sticking to flat colors and I just fill those in with the magic wand tool.  For Jenny I did add a bit of subtle lighting on her "clothes" and "hair" to suggest a metallic sheen.

This is not the finished drawing, I'm going to add a few more characters from the show as well, but I hope you enjoyed the peek at the upcoming art and my process too!  If you have any questions just let me know!