Let's Make a Deal - in progress

some wip shots of Let's Make a Deal.
I post these to share how I work and to be helpful, so if you have any questions about how I did things, please do leave a comment!


The sketch was based on a runway shot of RuPaul as I loved the dress she was wearing.

I tend to shade one item at a time as that's my preference. I use the darkest shade on one side only to enforce the light source. A greyer tone in the palette gives it that silky look.

When I started the skin shading, I thought it'd be cool if she was in grey-scale apart from the dress, so I started using a warm grey palette to compliment the red.

As I was doing the face, I'd moved on from the initial RuPaul inspiration and was going for something more conceptual. I started making the end of the dress fade out to black and then, on a whim, added the little flamy bits. At this point, I thought 'hey she'd make a cool devil if she had horns', so I added the horns.

Then I was stuck with what to do background-wise. I'd already decided I wanted some red back-lighting, and I wasn't sure it would show up well on certain backgrounds, so I played around with a few colours. Eventually though, I settled on adding some carnage at her feet (as I didn't want to detract from the doll itself), making the flames of the dress red and keeping the red back-lighting very simple.