Geronimo Finished Drawing

Here is the final drawing for one of the Boys' Life illustrations I am working on. I always take my thumbnail drawings and enlarge them to use as the basis for my final drawing, adding detail and making adjustments as I work. I recently purchased a portable light table that has been very helpful in this process. For years, I created my final drawings on tracing paper right over the top of my enlarged thumbnail drawing. This allows me to retain the shape relationships, proportions and overall arrangement of elements that I carefully established in my concept sketch.

Tracing paper is a terribly non-archival surface and these drawings will probably fall apart in short order. I always figured I had the physical painting though, so I didn't worry about it.  Since I am painting more digitally these days and there is no actual painting, I decided it might be nice to have some sort of artifact from the process other than a pile of pixels on a hard drive. I am now creating more finished full value drawings which I then scan and paint over digitally in Photoshop. I am really enjoying the drawing phase of the process and like having something physical left over as a result. This drawing is on 100 pound smooth finish Bristol which, by using the light box, I can see through well enough to get guidelines from the enlarged thumbnail drawing.