Surreal drawing tutorial - Part 2 Rendering

Surreal Drawing Tutorial - The Cosmic Throne - Part 2

Part 1 here

Step 5 Base Shading/colours

As I'm using sketchbook for this I'm using Warm and cool grays for this, and I usually start on the highlight points with the darkest colour, in this case a cool gray, and you'll notice that I started to add some basic shading on the main and secondary highlight areas to give myself an idea of where I wanted the light sources to be.  I then filled out warm and cool areas in their midtone range.

If you are following along traditionally, and using pencil for the shading then rather than filling the area with tone, I usually shade it starting from opposite the light source.  It doesn't matter too much about the highlight at this stage, but its a good idea to keep some there, as the eraser doesn't always restore the white of the paper.

Step 6 Rendering

I then go over the highlight areas and add the gradient and highlights, and add a light or dark area around those highlights to push them out more.  I then do the same over the rest of the image, trying to keep these areas as mid value as possible so that those highlights remain the most high contrast, with of course the main highlight the most contrasted.

Step 7 Polish

In this step I do all the finishing elements that help the piece, for this one I just added a shadow to one side of the shape to bring it out a little more, but its usually a good idea to also go over the lines again and make sure they are smooth and stand out.  You might want to add a background as well. 

Last thing to do is to sign the piece and its then ready to go :)

Hope you've enjoyed this brief tutorial , please drop me a message if you use it, I'd love to see your work.