Meet the Graciella from Brazil who ordered me her portrait. I would say it was not really easy to draw her because this woman is so different looking on different photos so I could not find out and catch her character. So there were few completely different variations I was working on.
This sketchy girl was the first version of Graziella. I was going to finish it in case she would approve it. But she said it's not her real look and there is nothing similar to her face there.
Also she told me she is too serious there and in life she is really positive so it's better to make her smiling. Okay, no problem, I've done another one. I was thinking if I will stylize her face more as a cartoon she might approve it because it would be hard to say if it is her portrait or not.
I was working in grays first and then it become a mess for me to color it so you may see my tries here. I've added the Color layer effect on top then few times was playing with Soft Light and Overlay stuff but ended up with just drawing from scratch on top of all layers in regular. Was so time consuming because of unusual way I started to try.
But anyway she declined that version again. She never ordered anything from illustrators and I could understand her inability to explain what she really wanted from me so I've started from scratch again but this time I was working as if she was professional client from agency or big brand.
Done the sketch and approved that. I said okay, let's do it step by step so at every step you can comment and edit if needed but after you approve the stage we can not get back to it. So we will save our time here.
Started the coloring process. It's all done in Adobe Photoshop by the way. I am creating different layers and drawing solid shapes there with hard round brush. Then locking background transparency I could draw inside that shapes.
This supposed to be the final one. I was satisfied and sent it for approval. The main complain here was she was too sexy but in life she is not dressing like that. Then there was something else said about the skin tone...
Okay, it's not a problem to edit all this small things. Let's do her office-like worker. Here you are. With more white skin and all you've asked.
Graziella: You know, I would like myself to look more Angelic. Less chicky... More pure...Fil Dunsky: No problem, here you are...She approved that top one. Thought I am not sure if she really liked that or not. Maybe she was just fed up with me. I never showed that version in my portfolio because I don't like it actually. The one I've put there is this:
freelance illustrator ॐ Fil Dunsky
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