'Spar' WIP- step by stepc

Err.. I'm sure you'll need full view for this!

I started drawing this image in my spare time at work. It's far from finished, but I just thought I might share my working progress with my fellow DA people. The image is of my friend's and my old roleplaying characters, Jarlin and Jadress, having a sparring match. I don't work the same way all the time, but I guess this is generally how I do it...

1. I begin with a super rough thumbnail sketch. I wanted to try and do a scene instead of just floating character pin-ups. I am trying to get better about drawing backgrounds and environments for my characters.. ^^

2. Even so, the characters are the most important part of the picture. Since I have the .. sparse.. environment already sketched out, I start drawing over my characters and try and make sure the anatomy and angles look okay. I've begun to flip the canvas back and forth a lot to make sure the picture looks good from both sides.

3. More fleshing out of the characters. Personally, I need to have things drawn out pretty clearly before I start the "inking." Jarlin's staff was newly imagined, so I actually sketched it out in a separate document, then pasted it in.

4. Clothing design is fun!! I feel it's important to have the bodies worked out nicely before you throw clothes on top, otherwise, you might not know how the clothing will lay. Plus, I get the satisfaction of making everyone at work think I'm all about drawing big nice naked asses. The only reason I haven't put in Jadress' sword yet is because I am terrible at drawing swords in perspective.. I needed to find reference online, but the internet at work was down... >.<;

5. Finally I start inking. This is as far as I've gotten with this pic, but I'm pretty pleased with it so far.