First of many articles on the Insider! I posted this vector on WCF last night and got some nice reviews from some of the members, so firstly thanks for them 
and now i give you the Step by step of it so you can get a feel of how i do them.
As i said in my thread on WCF, i just dont think this one works well as a whole, it seems off proportion-wize, but i thought i may as well show you how i construct them. If you ain’t going to sit infront of your computer for around 6-7 hours then dont even attempt something like it, they just dont look good unless you get a decent amout of detail in them (even though i propbally go overboard on things you’ll hardly see, lol) I done such a long sitting on this that ive pulled the muscle in my wrist. Do’h!
Warning: around 20 images so might take a little while to load them all
^ Started with the basic shape and color of the face, Its one of the most important parts of the image but its also one of my favorites to do aswell.
Hardly using the image for most of the shading, i really liked doing this part, it was the biggest different in this new piece to all my others, a totally different way of shading i usually rely on complex gradients intertwined perfectly, this way its just flat dark blueish but layering them to become darker. (lowish opacity). the nose is usually hard for me to do but i was quite happy with the outcome considering i had to make it along, as the picture i was using was way too low quality to get any detail like the form of a nose from.
I can allow to go over the line of the face here because hair will be on a higher layer later on.
LOOK AT THE LAYERS! probably double the amount you can see for the eye. thats the amout of details in the eye, from eye lash’s to the reflextions, to the light on the little thing in the corner of the eye. needed to have bright blue iris’s to make them striking. as always i really enjoyed doing the eye.
The reason i dont ‘draw’ is that i can not make a set of eyes i can do one awsomely then screw it up with the other.. this is kinda of avoided with the magic of cut paste and reflect. But i had to move around the shadows and things to make it look less obvious.
I Love doing big black outlines, kind of adds to my style of semi-realistic comic characters… i dont want to be 100% realistic because that’d take me ages and i like doing my own little twsits in there.
See Very comicy lips, i usually have a hard time with lips so this time i just went pretty basic.
The full face is nearly finished up now just adding lighting details
This was the end of DAY ONE, i just threw a rough hair in there, (this is where i found out something was off.. but i just kept going, i tried to fix it but was going wrong. so i thought i could fix it later.
Day Two – Ooooooo the fun of hair today! i both kinda of like doing this part and kind of hate it because it takes so long. Again i like my style of non realistic hair (i have tried it in the past and it just didnt work for me) So this is my style instead hinting of directions with high and low lights.
Now this was when i thought… this looks weird, only because i hadnt drawn the hands in yet.
Here is my example of the lighting on the hair, quite a nice curl, its actually pretty simple looking but figuring out how and where to place them is tricky.
Again more work on the hair, figuring out the flow.
Woo! one side is nearly finished! Took around 80-100 min’s really loved how it came out, and the colors and just sexy as hell.
Wow this one is kind of a big jump probally another 80 mins later, i reused the curl because i was getting a little bored now… the hands were going to be hard because the picture was detail-less for them, and ive always struggled on hands.
Woo more shading! i removed the glove because by now i was really getting bored, i just wanted to get it done so i decided to loose alot of the details in the hand’s and keep the focus on the face.
Boobs are always fun to draw.
Just some finishing touch’s on the other arm
All my fun layers… my god thats 6-7 hours of work… So it is really annoying that it is that little bit off 
Now i know alot of you are going to wonder of some of the stages came to be.. and well there is no secret, just hard work, Use the pen tool, change the opacity’s to around 3-13%’s and follow the contours of what your trying to do… there really is no other secret other than the pen tool. (And gradients, but not in this one because all of what you see is Flat colors at low opacitys because i used to rely too much on gradients and wanted to challange myself).
I hope this helps some of you with your vectors, but there really is no secret filters or anything like that in Illustrator, it just takes hard work and a lot of time! Hundreds of layers later you get a finished vector!
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Off topic: I am going to be writeing a few tutorials and walkthroughs for some of my work on WCF Insider, so look out for them in the coming months!
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