what I do ...

First...
I sketch on tracing paper.

Then I play with color,
here I used colored pencils
but sometimes I splash paint on it.

At this point, I've also darkened in the
pencil sketch with a black marker.
This enables me to see it through
the canvas for tracing.

And so begins the actual painting
once I'm happy with the preliminaries. 

Tada!
Painted and ready to send to Ruth
for the next leg of it's journey.
Ruth being Ruth Schmuff Designs
my illustrious distributor.
Once Ruth gets my finished master, 
it's measured, photographed,
hopefully ooooo'd and aaaahhhh'd over,
and then
... it's sent to the repeat painters for production.
Whew, it's a journey.

Viola! A belt...
I love borders, I love to make a design feel
solid by boxing it in and most often adding some
kind of border. The border can happen in the stitching.
Or as with this design, in the painting.
This border took some figuring mathematically,
hence, the belt was born
so I could figure out the count and spacing exactly.

The next step in the design journey,
stitching!
Although, I don't always write a stitch guide for
each piece. I'd love to but the time
just isn't there to play with each new design.

I draw much faster than I stitch!