Angry baby owl Steps

This is how i usually go about my quicker/small paintings

1. Sketch and a bit of AO: After i clean up my sketch (usually with the eraser) i use the same layer and paint a bit of ambient occlusion on it. I may lower theoverall opacity of this one and put in on multiply

2: I with this was a joke but sadly it isn't. That blob you see here is my quick way of setting the light. I preety much just  make another layer underneath my Sketch one and paint the objective with a midtone gray. I then add main lightsource and shadows.
Quick tip: When i'm in a hurry i use the "dodge" tool but set to midtones for light. By holding "alt" it changes to burn tool and i use it to add shadow. 

3:  I make a new layer and in this case i believe it was on top of the other two and added colors. Some people have a bit of trouble coloring their bnW painting and i am no veteran about it either. As a general rule tho whenever my bnw base is more on the dark side (like here) the color layer is set to "soft light" if it's lighter i put colors on a multiply layer. This ofcourse may change. What i want to achieve in either case is muted/desaturated colors. It looks boring but it's a better base for adding more volume in later steps

4: I add more light (screen, overlay or soft light layers usually do it for me) and detail the owl a bit. I also painted a bit of rim light altho i'm sure i kind of messed that up a bit

5: Detailing a bit more mostly around the eyes and head. At this point i decided it looks finished enough for the time i wanted to give for it.

6: Just some colorbalance and level adjustement to tie everything together