The Turquoise Emperor- in the making

Hello, folks! Back again, this time dragging my latest drawing along! I actually wrote a story to go along with it, so the process of it was draw-write-draw-write-draw-write, until I completed both, but the story later because I wanted to add in lots of descriptive bits here and there. Didn't turn out quite so bad, I suppose, though it is a bit long.
The only reason why it took me a couple of days to complete the drawing is that colouring peacock feathers is effing hard. No, seriously. It's actually quite a challenge trying to come up with a plausible colour palette for the iridescent feathers, and yet I still think I haven't quite got it spot on. But, oh well, for a first shot I think I did okay.

Here are some pictures that I took while colouring! A tutorial-ish step-by-step process, if you will ^^.

Back feathers-base coat.


Train eyelets base coat- outer ring is Letraset ProMarker in Grass Green, teardrop centre is Copic Y19(Napoli Yellow), and circle centre is Copic BG15(Aqua).
The top-left feathers (the completed ones), are made up of: YG03(Yellow Green), G05(Emerald Green), Prismacolor Light Olive Green and a green Pilot gel pen for the outer streaks, Y23(Yellow Ochre) for teardrop centre streaks, and B06(Peacock Blue), B29(Ultramarine Blue), B02(Robin's Egg Blue), and E49(Dark Bark) for the circle centre.


Completed peacock headshot.

Completed peacock with train.
The whole picture is slightly larger than A3-size, so...yeah. You can imagine the amount of feathers I had to colour. But it was really fun and absolutely satisfying =D.

Snazzy closeup of completed flowers. Main colours used are Copic Y21(Buttercup Yellow), Copic Y11(Pale Yellow), Copic RV21(Light Pink), and YR09(Chinese Orange).
....Holy cow I just realized I typed all that out from memory. Have I actually memorized all the colours I have in my marker inventory?!

Close-up of completed train feathers and flowers.

Completed drawing! With a simple background using my birthday pressie from my sister- Blasta airbrush! It's technically a kid's version of an airbrush, really (you attach a water-based marker form the set into a air-squeezer thingy and blow the marker particles onto the paper). It's pretty good for a kid's plaything, and if airbrushing is this much fun, I'm SO saving up for the Copic Airbrush System =D =D =D.

Throw the completed picture into Photoshop CS, add a spiffy texture, sparkles, and...

Tadaaa!!!! =D.

I realise that this is quite an insubstantial step-by-step. I'll attempt to make a tutorial soon for those who'd like to try colouring peacock feathers for themselves! You don't neccessarily have to have a swanky collection of markers (though those certainly help ;D), but you can try it out with colour pencils or watercolours; it'll turn out swell nontheless. Afterall, it's not the materials that make the art good- it's the skill, right? ^^.

Off I go now. Farewell!