am i correct to assume that you know how to save a drawing with a transparent background? that is basically the last, and most important, step!

generally, what you want to show up once you click the image is filled in white while the lineart is in a dark color (so it won’t show up with the dark background if you don’t want it to). err… kind of like this

of course, drawing with white on a white canvas obviously is not practical! which is why it is good to have a layer waaaay at the bottom that you hide and unhide a lot so you can check your progress.

(the main drawing obviously uses more than one layer; this is not a .sai file so i do not have all the separate layers to show you, sorry!)

once you are satisfied with your drawing, delete the layer with the dark background and save it as a transparent .PNG file (32bpp ARGB). and there you have it.

(as you have seen, i use SAI but i think if you use photoshop it should work about the same way.)

also, i think it should be noted that this is how i would draw this kind of thing if i am planning on posting it to tumblr. different sites will preview the image differently (personally, twitter works best with BLACK lineart. meanwhile, tumblr works better with a dark grey lineart– as the image previewer is semi-transparent)

but! as with art in general, there is definitely more than one way to go about this. avogado6 uses different opacities with their white (this is how you can get grey) as well as using a fully colored drawing for example. so don’t be afraid to try different things out!

happy drawing!