Piedmont-Sardinia (Art; process)

A summary for the Kingdom of Sardinia as both a real-world former Kingdom, and a Hetalia OC is here: http://charvatres.deviantart.com/art/Piedmont-Sardinia-157253809

Now, here's a write-up about how I made it, if you're interested:

Planning

The piece started when I got permission to create a Piedmont-Sardinia OC for the deviantART group, HetaliaInternational. I procrastinated for a bit, but finally got to making it yesterday (3/13/10)

First off, I wanted to plan the colors. I had originally planned for red-brown hair (Italy), but I decided on a dirty-blonde (due to his proximity to France and Switzerland).

I also wanted to include the colors blue and red (the flag colors) in the piece. I decided on a blue outfit, but I made many of the lines red, to keep that aspect. I also made his eyes brown, and gave him a curl, to refer to Italy.

The outfit was heavily influenced by FF3. I'm still having some trouble about originality, but I think I added enough aspects to make it nice. I gave him a saber and double-buttons to refer to his expertise on the Mediterranean sea (both aspects were normally used by sailors during the 19th century). I also gave him a cross necklace to refer to his Catholicism. 

The helmet isn't necessarily Sardinian, but it does have a Swiss-French-Italian knight-look. It's very pompous in reference to his flamboyancy, and participation in the renaissance (before he was a unified kingdom).

Illustration

Because this is a pretty cutesy style, I made the lines awfully thick, and even thicker around the silhouette. Like I mentioned before, I made the lines in some areas (mostly face/helmet) red so I could contain that aspect of his flag. 

For coloring, my technique was to do base colors first, then add gradients of extra colors (such as red) to different areas, then adding soft shading and shine. Relatively simple.

Also, the entire time, I kept the background a light blue, so that I remember to keep the color in mind while I color the rest of him.

TL;DR : Charvatres is artsy and likes to talk about his crap.