Here's my entry for @justaboutart 's contest. It was a fairly simple contest. All we had to do was redraw her drawing in our style without tracing. Since everyone was drawing it with different clothes, flower, hairstyle, etc. I decided to do mine differently too. Originally, I wanted to her to hold a cherry blossom but then I changed it into a lotus flower.
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(Each bullet represents an image number in order from first to last)
The pose was already given to us but I decided to change the hand. I didn't know what I want the hand to look like at that moment so I left it blank in the first draft.
Did the face. I stopped here for a few days to think about the hair and clothes.
Did the hair. I chose short hair because long hair just takes too long.
Did the dress and lotus and a bit of her arm.
Realized that her face wasn't in the middle so I moved that. And here I noticed that no matter how I put it, her hands will overlap with each other and I didn't want that. I decided to move her hand higher and make it look like she's about to touch the lotus. And I also made the lotus bigger.
Decided to add a ribbon bow thingy onto her hairband.
Added the lotus flower background. Moved her left hand closer
Did the base colors.
Added more details to the colors. It took too long so I didn't bother taking progress shots and I wasn't sure if I wanted to color it that way.
Added a darker background and sparkles.
I can't really draw anything besides people, so the lotus might not be the best looking lotus out there. Overall, I really liked this contest because I get to draw from reference rather than thinking of a pose myself. Looking forward on seeing more contests like this.