I had a bit of free time this week so I decided to work up a sketch I doodled before Christmas. It was just a silly little scribble but I thought it might make for a good illustration. The fish is a character I came up with way back, about five years ago… and originally he wasn’t a fish. He had weird little stumpy legs like a fat pink cow. Then there was a bird, with stumpy little wings….. I’ll probably work some of those other sketches up shortly as this one was quite a bit of fun to do.

The initial scribble from my sketchbook

The first stages of colour added. Most of the work so far has been done in Painter but I now switch to Photoshop to work on some of the lighting.

About half way through the illustration. Just basic colour and a bit of shading at this stage.

The finished illustration with all of the shading done and details added.

All in all about 6 hours work switching between Painter and Photoshop. The whole thing was illustrated using a Wacom Cintiq 21ux.