Holy crap this took forever!
You have no idea how many times I've redrawn this image over and over trying to decide what I wanted her to look like, what pose she was in, whether she'd be holding a weapon or not, etc!  I'd say all in all, I've spent over 9 hours or so on this image just trying to get it exactly right.  And the funny thing is that the commissioner (Krista) didn't even pay for a fully-colored image! I'm just one of those artists who, if I know that I'm taking forever to finish a piece, I'll throw in a bunch of extra shit (like coloring, etc) because I feel bad that I've taken so long. -_-!

Anyhoo, this piece prints out at a beautiful 20" x 30", and I'm sure Krista's going to be pleasantly surprised with it. View a larger version on my DeviantArt!

Check out some close-ups of the finer details in this images below:









It's sad how much the image loses when it's shrunken down like this.  The full blown print is the only way you'd ever see all of the cool shit and brush-work and little details I added to it.  Sigh!  If she ever gets it printed, I'll be sure to update you guys with some photos.

Anyhoo, as usual, take a look at my work-in-progress shots below!





Here are the various ways that I've redrawn the image over and over.  Holy crap.  It was really tricky for me because, number one, she paid for the piece, so I obviously didn't want to disappoint her.  And number two, I've never drawn zombies before! So how do I draw my typically adorable characters interacting with them?! AAAH.

After scrapping piece after piece, I finally settled on the redraw to the very right.  Heh.



This is a cool trick I do.  Basically, I'll pose however I need to illustrate the character I'm working on via my MacBook's webcam, and then draw a kind of rendition of that into my piece.  This is how I nailed the poses for the zombies (as well as a few of the gruesome expressions, haha -- thus, the blurred face, LOL).



Then someone on Twitter said that the anatomy was off on my Zombie, so I was like, whaaat?! No way! She's supposed to look like that!  But just to be safe, I distorted her arms even more and added mutation-lumps all over her.  It's a shame you can't really see these details in the finished piece unless you really stare at it, but the point is, I DID IT! And it took forever! SO PFFF!



Zombies are grossss! X_x
It was pretty difficult to come up with different ways to make people look decayed, decomposed, disembodied, etc.  I didn't really know what I was doing. -_-" So while illustrating the hoard of zombies coming for the main character, I just kept in mind that I'd probably make the background colors really dark so you wouldn't end up focusing on how badly drawn it all is. HAHAHA. ^_^;;



For the coloring on this image, I actually used a combination of two different programs: Paint Tool Sai, and Photoshop.

I know you can't really tell since my coloring looks essentially the same as it always does (unless you're a massive critic and can see the minor differences like I can), but the process of coloring this image was really just an experiment for me to see if I could master another art program.

I had to save my Photoshop lineart on my MacBook, then transfer over the image to my PC (since Sai only seems to work on PC's), and began to color it there.



And dude, Sai is freaking awesome! All of the brush strokes that take me forever to craft and fake on Photoshop are built into Sai!  So I don't have to do any annoying blurring, or layering, or opacity tweaking -- it's such a simple and easy to use program!  If you have a PC or are looking to get the coloring style down that I have, I definitely suggest giving Sai a try!



Freckles, zombie color washes, blood spatters, eye coloring begins, etc.



And then I drowned out the background a bit just to bring the character to life, signed it, added my signature glowing adorable highlights all over the place, those random strands of hair I like to draw in, and BAAAMM!! FINISHED!! XD FUDDDGEEE THIS TOOK SO LOOONGGGG FMLLLLL. But I'm so proud of it and it looks great (in my opinion).  Like, this is a piece I can actually send to Krista and feel satisfied with, y'know!?

... Actually.
Looking at it now, I can't help but think I should add blood spatters to the girl as well. -_-" Oh well. That's easy enough to add! Heh. Hope you enjoyed!

Perfectionist Workaholic,
XOXO Cheri XOXO

This post has been X-Posted to HEYCHERI.COM.

Sherilynn "Cheri" Macale is a freelance journalist and illustrator who can't exactly decide what she wants to do with the rest of her life and so does absolutely everything. Harass and prod her via Twitter, check out the badassery on her Website, and leave a friendly message on her Facebook.