Chubby

This image cannot be used without the permission of the blog owner.
To view better quality/more detailed image, click here.

Chubby - that's what I decided to call her half way through the illustration. I had sketched this last year but decided to go digital a week back. I started off with the intention of learning new techniques of rendering and the process was a lot of fun. This time, I avoided using flat tones, wanted to show dimensions and I'm satisfied with the outcome. The awesome part is, while working on this, I learnt a lot of new techniques that I could apply elsewhere. It was important to stick to one style of rendering so I avoided mixing more than 2 styles but learnt a lot anyway!

Rendering : The skin rendering wasn't too difficult, it was really easy in fact. That went pretty quick. I played really safe with the clothes (as you can see!), tried avoiding multiple folds and kept it simple.
The bunny puppet & the ice cream, I tried showing a velvety texture for the bunny puppet but it isn't too evident. Though the ice cream was a lot of fun! I found a photoshop brush that gave the rough texture (if you view the original version, linked above, you'll see).
My favourite part was the hair ! I searched high and low for good hair rendering techniques, but none really matched the style I was using. So i tried a lot of combinations and tada! It took a LOT of time - since there are many tonal values there, but worth the effort. (I've always feared hair rendering, but I feel more confident now!)

Concept : While drawing it, Chubby totally resembled baby-me. I always wore my hair like that to school, my school uniform was of the same colours too! Okay, no, I didn't ever have those innocent eyes. When I'd walk, my pigtails would always fly (this is an exaggeration of course). The hands. Confession time. I wasn't in any mood to do the perfect hand anatomy, so I wiggled them to avoid detailing there :D
PLEASE don't skip the band-aid on my right knee (view in the link above) -- which kid doesn't have scrapped knees ? But I was an extreme case there, I tripped over hair clips too.

Background : I chose green because it seemed to be one colour that was enhancing the illustration (stuck to cool colours). While flipping through various illustrations for inspiration, I came across THIS . The simplicity of the background was fantastic so I used the basic idea of using a specific shape/style. I kept it simple and added depth by shading a few boxes.

I'd love to hear what you think of this! :)

Until next time,
Bises :*