Mother and Son

This picture took me WAY longer than it had to. About a week and a half. I drew it quite a long time ago and started coloring it during the crunch to finish my second novel before NaNoWriMo, which I did. When I did the skin (I did them on the same layer), it was too harsh so my original plan was tone it down, but I found that using a Gaussian Blur softens skin tones considerably.

The eyes never pose a problem for me, but of the late, the newer way I do hair slows me down. I fill in the basic area in and around the hair, and then I go back with an eraser and rub it down to size. You'd think, with him having less hair, that Sheldon would be the easiest, but it wasn't. His hair is spiky, so I couldn't maneuver around his hair smoothly. But I got it down. Logistically, lighting and shading wasn't much of a problem.

I recalled "Hey! Laura Lamar's mouth is supposed to look kinda like Sheldon's!" A little reddish color mixed with her skin tone on a low opacity in the Hard Light layer worked very well, I'm happy to say.

Now, Laura's eyelashes do not have the same intensity of Sheldon's lashes, but their eyes hold similar intensity. They're the same color and relatively the same shape (if you look at Sheldon's eyes when he's older).

As always, after coloring the skin, eyes, and hair, I was up against hardness: clothes, props, background, and overall lighting. Sheldon's clothes were easy, took me only about 10-20 minutes *waves a hand dismissively.* But Laura's top was so difficult, mostly 'cause I approached it without a plan. I went through Impressionist Brushes and textures and funky fade-y patterns for about 3/4 of an hour before settling on what's here using fill colors and a special brush. The lace stuff on her sleeves wasn't nearly as difficult; I used the color from the green flowers, colored the lace, and did minor shading. Wouldn't even put it at 15 minutes.

The sofa... It took me some time to figure out what I wanted to do, but I got it right. I used the Bucket Tool and the Burn and Dodge tools with spatter brushes. Then I Burned the shadows. It was the wall, maybe, that was the hardest. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it. I thought about stripes, but it looked bad, and the Lamars don't have striped walls anyway. After about 20 minutes, I came to using the Impressionist Brush, and thus, the end result.

You can't really see it, but there is a Soft Light Layer on Laura and Sheldon. I wanted to keep Laura's beautiful complexion visible rather than obscure it under a bath of orange, so I dropped the opacity considerably, but it lends enough effect to make a difference. Though... maybe that's 'cause I know what it looks like without the light.

And of course, Sheldon is a runny-nosed baby, so I had to incorporate snot in there somehow. The snot bubble was easy to do, but I wasn't sure how it would look against Laura's clothes. I hid the layer until I was done with them, it turned out fine, so I was good to leave it there.

This picture is also on deviantART.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for another picture later!

Later.