The Earth-Toned Pill

After being inspired by Hideyoshi's amazing AF-014, I decided to embark on something similar. It seemed only natural for me to do some kind of aircraft, because I've always had a love for anything aviation-related, but especially military aviation. I plan to put several hours in this piece, and I'll document the major steps on here as I go.

So to start off, here is what I've got:

Click on the pic for a larger view

I started out by creating a gradient for the sky on the background layer and then laid out the clouds using a standard brush, followed by forming with the smudge tool and motion blur filter.

The initial lineart is just that... Initial. I plan on cleaning it up and adding more details before laying in the flat color layers. Yep, that's right. This one is going all the way. Enough screwing around for me; I want to finally create something digitally (like my traditional-media self portraits) that I can be proud of.

If you have any suggestions or thoughts, let me know!