Rats!

Rats!
Hi Everyone, I'm back/still here, and I painted some rats :)

I actually really like rats and had a couple as pets when I was a kid. I was going to do some happy rats with red background for the lunar new year, but I kept envisioning them in an alley and that's not very new years-y so these are just some city-type rats.

I also wanted to try something a bit simpler and more comic-like than what I last posted, so this has pretty simple colors. I kept the sky reddish though, because even though this isn't a year of the rat painting anymore, I felt like a red sky was cool. It looks more pink right now when I'm posting this, though, so I don't quite know what it'll look like for you.

And finally I haven't really checked in here in several days, and that's my bad. I wasn't feeling great, but also I can honestly be a bit of a flake. I'm working on that and hopefully eventually I'll be able to blog and make art more consistently :)

Materials:

I do thumbnails and basic sketches on in a basic sketchbook with ballpoint pen. Nothing fancy.
I use Krita, which is a cool open source art program, to do all my digital drawing and painting.
I make my process collages in this weird little program called PhotoCollage and I'm totally up for alternative recommendations because it's sort of awkward to use.

Process:

I start by making various sketches. The picture is dark because my phone camera is not the best.

Then I sketch the rats in Krita. I struggled a bit with the standing rat and initially it was holding a wire because it was going to be a robot rat.

Finished rats and lines for the surrounding scene.

And then I paint stuff. I actually remembered to export images while painting fairly regularly. The shadows are more for effect than from a particular light source

Lastly, finishing touches and here's the final image again.

There are things I would change, but I'm pretty happy with it, especially since it felt like I was trying something a bit new.
Thanks for reading and looking :)