Concept and Sketches
To highlight the comical nature of the scene I chose to contrast a fairly detailed rendering of the lute with a more exaggerated and loose handling of the donkey himself. The text for this picture reads:
The donkey took special pleasure in music, so that he went to a celebrated musician and said, “teach me your art, that I may play the lute as well as you do.”
“Ah, dear little master”, answered the musician, “that would come very hard to you. Your fingers are not quite suited to it, and are far too big. I am afraid the strings would not last.”
But no excuses were of any use. The donkey was determined to play the lute. And since he was persevering and industrious, he at last learnt to do it as well as the master himself.
I started with a really rough and simple sketch, about 4" x 5", to establish the basic composition. I then scanned the sketch into Photoshop for final adjustments.
On a whim I tried flipping the head and felt the picture worked a lot better (that whole contrapposto thing).
To wrap up the sketching stage I reduced the opacity of the scanned layer and did a quick draw over on a multiply layer in Painter (IX), using a custom brush that mimics my pencil work:
Lastly I did a quick overlay to establish how the shadows would fall, and to approximate the associated light source. I tried several different positions for the light, making sure the strong cast shadow didn't compete too much with the main figure.
Rough Colors
I first toned the canvas with an orangey color in Painter, under the sketch multiply layer, using a buildup brush. This breaks up that awful whiteness, and gets me seeing into the space. It also sets the stage for the color scheme.
I then laid in some solid areas of color over the orange tone and under the sketch layer, in Photoshop.
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