Hello friends, welcome to this new commission made for @smanuels, I bring you a fox that lives in a distant and desolate plain. This beast in its appearance proves to be delicate like art, pure like white, unreal like magic, subtle like air and sublime like emotions.

His fantasy description is quite accurate, since his gray coat, with yellow eyes and wavy tails highlight his mystical origin, fitting perfectly with the world around him, full of powerful creatures filled with magic and great mysteries, that is the world that @smanuels has built and through which I want to guide you, to reveal the secrets behind each illustration, let's see them right now, come with me.

Tools:

• Wacom Intuos 4
• Photoshop
• Brushes courtesy of Imad Awan: Download here

First I focused on the animal, I already had a clear description of what I should do, but I still had to look for a good posture for the fox, this led me to make five quick sketches, the truth was only stripes almost meaningless, nothing too concrete, in each idea I could not find a good dynamic for the tails or the head, but after a while I decided on the sketch you see today, I polished it, centered it on the canvas and made a nice outline.

In the specifications of the client, I was asked for a fox with a dark red aura of power, gray fur, yellow eyes and in the middle of a plain with dry grass, so I went straight to capture these colors as base tones, separating in different layers the silhouette of the fox and the landscape, all in order to use cutting masks in the detail of the animal, so I can paint without fear of leaving the area of the silhouette.

No matter how much I looked at the illustration, the color palette didn't appeal much to me, so I was experimenting with settings and blending modes until I found the right setting by filling the canvas with a purple color and adjusting the layer in the "exclude" blending mode. From then on the task was to progressively detail the animal's coat, as usual, I covered the outline as the painting progressed, my goal is semirealism.

In the brush package I left above, you will find the brushes I used for the ground, one of them from the cloud set, for the details of the sky and on the ground a combination of grass, oil and other brushes with incredible textures. The energy ball was very easy to do, I only had to create a red ball and erase softly its interior with a diffuse and soft brush, then, with this same brush and the fusion modes "overlay" and "Dodge color" I was adding the most brilliant and outstanding shades, but it is important to emphasize that after all that, you must correct the old brushstrokes that are left there, this is done with the airbrush in a very low opacity, the duration of these corrections are only determined by your patience and the resistance of your body when you are sitting too long. Take care of your back and eyes, rest while you are drawing.

Tell me in the comments that you imagine when you see this illustration.

I'll leave you a little gif with the whole process in it, so you can better appreciate the step by step.