So, I got the good word from the client today that she likes the image, so I'm going to call it done. This one is kind of special. I know it must be really hard for her as it's her husband and he's passed. There's a connection to my mom, though as he was from her side of the family. My sister says the portrait has the family eyes. And I do kind of see my mom's eyes in this. Hers were also blue.

I went about this in the usual way. Once I had the sketch, I went about the 'inking' in Procreate on my iPad. There was a LOT of fiddling about with this as there were lines that were too gently drawn and some that were too heavy and they were making a difference. I went back and forth between the photo and the drawing many times. Each color was done in grey so I might get a good idea of the balance of the piece, though I knew from the start that I wanted to do it in pink and gold. Once I had the greys done, I exported each separate layer to my Mac and dropped them each into SuperVectorizer. Then each one of those got its own layer in Affinity Designer.

I started with the skin tone first as I knew I wanted a pale orangey-pink. As I adjusted, a lot of the yellow came out, I dropped the saturation and made it lighter. There were a few back and forths with this. The lines and facial hair I knew I wanted a gold color. Originally, the glasses were going to be a darker color but I found that distracting and, as usual, I like to keep my palette pretty tight. The eyes were tough in that his real eye color is a good deal darker but, again, it made them stand out too much. Once they were "right," I knew I wanted to color the shirt the same color to help unify the image. It was easy to make the wrinkles the same color only darker.

The head scarf was the last part to be done and I knew I was going to have trouble with the Invader Zim character. In the original, they're bright neon green. My original idea was to leave them out altogether. I even informed the client that, with her permission, I would be removing them so they didn't distract from his face and she was fine with that. But when it came down to it, I not only a found a way to make them work, I think it actually looks better with them there. That do-rag is the same color as shirt and eyes just darker and less saturated, so, again, I keep the palette unified. The background is similarly the same color as the lines and glasses, just darker and less saturated.

I think this is one of my favorites, not only because I think it looks like the subject but because I know, if my mom had lived to see it, she would actually like this piece of my work. She never understood my more abstract stuff and she died before my real portrait phase, which is a shame. This is also a family member and I'm honestly glad I was asked to do it. Our family is scattered to the four winds on both sides. While I'm used to it, every once in awhile, it makes me a little sad. I was the only family member outside the immediate family on our side that was at the funeral and I seemed to surprise everyone by being there.

This entry is a good deal longer than the usual ones, just in case the client wanted to see the process. Or anyone else. This is Jimmy.