Here's a "splash page", literally. Poppy is in the twilight zone.
Everything begins with Salvatore's script.
The first steps are very important even if there isn't much to show by way of artwork.
I like to keep the characters moving/facing left to right which is the direction of reading. I have learned the importance of finding reference, especially for hands, although I'm getting better at that.
After a pencil thumbnail I'll start roughing out on the page. I use the horribly named Canson Fanboy bristol board which tolerates a lot of erasing because I'm not a natural artist.
One of the more useful tools I've discovered is time. As in leaving the pencils for long enough to see them with a fresh eye. It's both heartening and discouraging to see mistakes; heartening, because they can be fixed; discouraging because, well, you know, art is a confidence thing.
Then I get my Escudo No. 2 inking brush out and try to emulate my art hero, Alex Raymond from the glory days of 1940s comics pages.
Brush inking takes practice! But it's a great feeling when the lines flow from thin to thick.
Then, I scan the page in, save as a bitmap, and make the journey to Broderick Print to get the page copied on to watercolour paper. Not brave enough yet to paint on the original!
There's so much to learn with watercolour. I have experimented with digital painting, and I'm very grateful to be able to correct errors, but for me nothing beats old-school materials.
From there the watercolour page is scanned, the levels adjusted maybe to add some saturation, and the lettering added using Blambot Pro.
Eventually all the pages are combined in to one pdf document but that's an area I'm still working on.