Practice piece. Made with: Systemax Paint Tool Sai 1.1 and Photoshop 6.0.

EDITED IMAGE ver1.2 (1/11/2009): Used blues to push the boy forward, added some white light around him for contrast, auto-contrasted. Added some white light to gears to push them a little backward to the background.
(v1.1 not uploaded, deleted)
ORIGINAL: ver1.0 for comparison: [link]

I tried this out after reading this article about colors in composition by `yrindale - [link] , which helped a lot with the issue of "focal point". The picture was flattened out, then I used blue to push the boy forward and the rest of the wheels to the back. Generally, there would be three "layers" - the background, the middle and the foreground. The blues were also to balance it, in the first picture he mentioned in the article, that's how it was mentioned to work. Added a bit of green to make a slightly weathered out moldy look. Steam is water? Maybe that's that?

Also there was this comment about using white space, which proved pretty interesting, so I opted for a pin-up with a centralized focal point, using the white space to push the red colors forward. So I also got the white in the space in between the wheels.

A bit of the background (steam and transparent train) came from this method: [link]
Which was the oil method he shared some time back. I don't think in this picture it's very evident because of the grunge textures, but to get the smoky effect I tried with a 20% opacity buildup to the default round brush.

It was a lot of fun! Yes, the reds and browns were inspired by this picture: [link]
Though I'm not even sure if mine is even slightly steampunk. Looks majorly Victorian to me (the usual).

_{EDIT: No, he's not me. I referred to myself in the mirror for a pose - got a chair and put a leg up, then dusted it clean, but that's not me. I'm not that narcissistic.}


Some useful suggestions by users so far:
Upping the contrast between character and background. I'll see what I can do... maybe deepen the blue.
Thin the lines to the gears - which I can't do since it's flattened, sorry. The only workaround I have left is to deepen the blue and use some white light on the character to push him forward.
- Done, reupped - 1/11/2009


Grunge texture by: [link]
Moldy texture by: [link]

Death Note font by MoeMoe (C)
Art work by BOMB4Y @ deviantART/LiveJournal (C) 2009