Page 39 Completed, with Even More Butterflies!

Purple-headed Monarch Butterflies! Buddy wants to give them all a big hug.

This image has about 100 layers containing butterflies. It’s about 240MB, which seems about normal for my Clip Studio Paint pages. Most of the layers in this picture contain only a small butterfly object, which keeps the file size smaller that it would be if every pixel were painted. I have a fairly powerful machine, but Clip Studio slows down drastically when I try to resize a layer. It’s a little pokey at times, but with its many time-saving features, I prefer to work with Clip Studio Paint over other drawing applications.

Page 38: Betty Burro Finds Buddy's Family

On page 38 Betty Burro has found Buddy’s family. To create the background image of a thousand butterfly faces, I created a brush of a single face. The brush has randomized size, opacity, and angle to give it a less static appearance. I usually prefer to paint everything by hand, but in the interest of time, a brush served me well. My concern with this picture is that Betty’s appearance evolves each time I paint her. Before I publish this book I’ll have to make color corrections for earlier version of her hair and clothing. If I can remember back to February (5 months ago), I recall that her hair was punky pink. My favorite feature in this painting is Betty’s hand. If her hand seems a touch manly it’s because I used my own manly hand as a model.