It was just one of those nights, when only one very large bed was available at the inn, probably the bridal suite, and because they had been on the road for too many days, no one wanted to sleep on the floor. Playing Mahjong for the bed was out of the question. So they all crawled in and went to sleep.

While this drawing is officially called "Saiyuki Sleeping", the subtitle is "Hands from Hell" because I had to deal with six different hands in various positions in this pic. It was quite aggravating. Hands were referenced from my own, which got a little awkward when the hand I needed to draw was the one I needed to draw with!

Folks knowing the universe will recognize a few hints I put in - Goku holding Sanzo's hair while lying on top of him, Hakkai and Gojyo's hands resting together, Gojyo's other hand not being seen but may be causing Sanzo's frown, Sanzo's possessive hand on Goku's shoulder.

As usual, the majority of the piece was drawn and shaded with a #F pencil. Sanzo's hair was outlined with a #2H. Hakkai's hair was darkened with a #2B.

Hairstyles were referenced from a variety of manga, artbooks, official anime guides and doujinshi sources. Those hairstyles are a bit more complicated than the usual basic bishounen haircuts.

Originally, the drawing only had the four boys. A blank space was in the top left corner, so as an afterthought, a sleeping Hakuryu (Jeep) was added. He was referenced from manga and an official anime guide. His presence gives the pic a more innocent and sweet feeling.

After adding Hakuryu, who was accidentally drawn in a different style (I had been drawing oekaki prior to drawing him so that technique was still in my hand), the rest of the group had to be outlined as well. A #2H was used to outline everyone to match the dragon.

I ended up having to scan the drawing in four different sections because the scanner bed does not get the entire image. It likes to cut off the edges. Cobbling the pic together was a pain and I did some compromising to get it halfway decent. Even though I had written down the light/dark scanning settings and used them for each scan I still had to adjust the brightness to get the pages to match at the seams. Arg.... Then I flattened it and hit auto-contrast, then adjusted the auto-contrast back so it was not so intense.

A built-in Photoshop pattern was added as the sheet they are sleeping on so peacefully.