Here I hide the sketch layer and switch over to just the painting layer. The sheep is the first area of detail I begin to work on.
I also add an effects layer for the lantern halo and some texturing over much of the background. This is just a composite of a whole bunch of old paintings, basically creating an abstract texture pattern, then added as an overlay layer.
Now the painting is firmly established, and I work over all the areas of detail bit by bit.
It takes a bit of playing around to get the lighting on the sheep just right - its not receiving much direct light from the lantern, but it's also fairly light, so needs to pick up a fair amount of ambient light from the sky and moon.
The girl is also roughed in pretty quickly here.
As for "style" I set out very deliberately to return to a smeary wet look, as in The Girl in the Iron Shoes. I also work with bristle brushes (in Painter), which for me makes executing a painting much quicker, but the look is consequently a little "scratchy." So for this picture I stuck with a basic round brush, with lots of bleed. The only real variation is sometimes I drop the grain a bit, for some texture, and occasionally squeeze the brush shape into an ellipse for things like the blades of grass.
The girl's face and dress are tightened up a bit more. The sheep didn't feel like he was pulling as much as he should be on that hill, so I tilt his head down a bit.
At this point I decided the castle really wasn't a powerful enough component of the imagery, so I redid the whole thing. I did a whole new sketch, then laid in the basic colors and shapes.
Here I add some detail to the line of trees, and give a little tilt to the castle (one more great thing about digital painting!).
Finally I decide that the lantern isn't quite working. I wanted the shape to be rounder and "cuter," and also to put a little more effort into the light rays coming from it.
A few more color and value adjustments, and I'm done. But have a look at the steps involved in the close up of Girl, sheep and castle.
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