Well, this is it.

My last steemit post of the year. It has certainly been an interesting 5 months getting into steemit, steem, and cryptocurrencies in general. And, as an added bonus, I just made it to a level 60 reputation last night. The perfect way to bring in the new year with a new rep score.

I attempted drawing the eye from my profile picture last night. This was the first time I've ever tried shading in a crosshatch comic book style. This helped me practice using the pressure control on my graphic pen to control line thickness. It turned out pretty good, I think, for a first try.

The Rought Sketch

I ended up taking some time to make my own brushes before starting this drawing. The first one was a pencil that looked a little more like a pencil. The basic pencil brush in photoshop doesn't have that rough feel to it. After a little messing around with some settings, I managed to get something that looked more like a pencil.

The Ink Lines

The inking is getting easier. I'm able to get a more smooth stroke out of the pen, but the really long lines are still a little tricky to get perfectly smooth in the direction I wanted.

I started doing some of the shadings on this layer but realized it should get its own layer. I was satisfied with what I did so I ended up leaving it.

The Eye

The eye took me a little bit of time to get looking decent. Mixing colors together is something I will have to work on next. It turned out pretty good for my first attempt. It can only get better from here.

Fixing the Thumbs

Because I made the eye on its own level, it was necessary to separate the thumbs from the original ink layer and move them to their own layer so they could be placed on top of the eye.

Rought Shading

Once everything was looking good with the eye, I did a rough going over with a pencil tool to get an idea where I should be adding the cross hatches.

eyeballsteem

The Final Drawing (with a touch for steemit)

The cross hatch shading really helped me to get a grip on the line pressure. I bet if I went back and did the initial line ink again after doing the cross hatching, it would be much smoother.