I stepped back and completed the base coloring before continuing with the shading and highlighting. This serves two purposes. It provides a colored background while painting in highlights and shadows and provides a shape for me to copy and apply a clipping path to. This allows me to over draw on top of each section and go over the edges without bleeding into the next area.
I've begun coloring the document with some custom made artistic brushes in Illustrator. These brushes enable me to paint with a blended edge. The brush strokes have a various transparency setting to enable me to layer strokes on top of each other and build over the color.
Here I traced my original sketch with a custom calligraphy brush. I've activated the pen's stroke-pressure width to allow me to vary the thickness of the line as I draw as if it was with traditional inks.
This image started as a sketch with a #2 pencial and then scanned. It is being worked in Illustrator for line-work and coloring.
