Very often, flipping the image horizontally can help you detect problems with proportions. Sometimes it also helps to step back from the screen to better see them.

Here I’ve only just noticed the out of place nostril where it connects to the eyebrows. I went back to the line art layer, disabled 'lock transparency' and painted on that area lightly with black.

I decreased my brush size (left bracket key, right key does the opposite) to do finer detailing and add a few more highlights.

I thought the face was coming along pretty good, but I didn’t feel it was finished just yet. I decided to come back to it later when I think I need to - until then I just moved on to the next area.

Step 11 and onwards

For the rest of the process it was only a matter of applying the principal methods between steps 7 – 10. I began by tackling the dominant colour of the suit and hat by using dark shades to give them form.

White areas

I made a new layer for the whites of the hair, gloves, rose and cuffs so I could easily edit them without fear of affecting other areas. I’d merge this layer to the main colouring layer after I’m done detailing them (the same procedure was done on the book and pocket watch).

To make sure I don’t get lost or lose focus I started working my way from the top down to the bottom. Sometimes I’d go back to the face and alter a few things, though.

Originally I never intended to give the rose a glow but I felt it needed a something a bit special. It had to be placed on a new layer on top of the line art to appear more luminescent.

The book

It wasn’t until I was very close to completing the character design that I began to pay attention to the book.

The original page colour was seemingly blending in with the vest, so I tinted the hue to make it look weather-worn. Not wanting to add further details to the cover to avoid competing with the face I simply gave it metallic corners and a couple of belts, much like an old tome.

Final color adjustments

I realized also during the late stages of this image that everything looked too bright, so after the character was basically completed I flattened all the layers (excluding the background) and put a new layer filled with dark green on the top, setting it to overlay mode. I thought the result looked more pleasing.

Additionally, I added a small degree of noise filter to reduce the clean digital look. Finally I took a textured picture I had stored in my files and edited it to match with the overall colour scheme. Then I placed it in the back and painted along one side of the character for a bit of dramatic backlighting effect.