I wish traditional media had layers.  And an undo button.  The entire process is much less frustrating this way.

Aside from isolating different areas of the artwork for each stage of the process, layers also double as progress snapshots.  The click of a button can peel back each stage all the way to the original rough sketch:

Second layer — the line art:

I drew this one up specifically to play around with Manga Studio’s colour tools.  I had to hunt down a few tutorials for this — layers and palettes are in greyscale mode by default, and it took me awhile to figure out why I couldn’t lay any colours down.  The dodge and burn tools were also hidden away, but I eventually found them in a submenu on the toolbox.  Once I got myself set up, the tools were easy enough to use (though I still have a lot to learn about digitally colouring line art, I think).

The final version, dressed up with with a Sagan quote.  I have some slightly more ambitious science-related illustration stuff in the queue.  This was a fun warmup.