Process: Celestial Siesta

This illustration was completed for an Italian illustration calendar contest. The theme was "siesta." I decided to do something outer-space related and I also decided that I wanted to document the whole process.

This is my final thumbnail for the illustration. I've figured out how I would like my values to be set up and my composition. I scanned this into my computer and blew it up to actual size (which is pretty small compared to my last piece) - 10x10."


I took the print-out of the thumbnail and drew over it using tracing paper. I found some reference of astronauts to get the space-suit realistic. My first drawing was much more detailed and realistic but with more and more details, the silhouette started to disappear and the idea of a space-suit (even though it looked more like the real thing) got lost. I went back for some more reference and found older suits that were more simple and based my drawing on them instead.

I scanned my final drawing and printed it out. I used woodless graphite on the back, taped it to my watercolor block and re-drew the drawing to transfer it to the paper.
I know that the foreground would be mostly lights and the background would be a starfield, so I used masking fluid over the areas that are not going to be space. I spattered more masking fluid to create random stars in the background with an emphasis on the diagonal from bottom left to top right to make a Milky Way-like band of stars.

I probably should have taken a photo while I was in the process of painting but I got absorbed and forgot to. Overall, the painting only took a few hours because this piece is nice and small. And here's the final product.