Cousin Portraits: cousin #5

For Christmas this year, I am working on a portrait of Joseph's nephew who is the same age as Jonah. He has four older sisters that I have also drawn in years past, and his parents requested a picture of him to go with the others. To see the portraits of his siblings, see this post here.

When I received the pictures from his mom, I was so excited because it was one of those rare snapshots that is actually good! Meaning, it isn't overexposed and washed out, or underexposed and too dark, and you can easily see the person's features. Also, it had a really pretty background for the most part. He was standing in green grass with fall leaves around him. The only thing I changed was far behind him: in the original there were some buildings behind him (he was in a backyard), so I used the pretty fog-covered mountains from a photo of one of his sisters instead. I figured this would be fine because they were both taken in the same town!



I think I got a little too excited about doing the background, as I usually finish it last, but I worked on it first this time. Now I'll have to put paper under my hand as I draw the rest so I don't smear it around!



The boy's photo was taken on a sunny day, while the background is obviously cooler and more cloudy. I had to remember to add a few cool colors to his face and clothes so that he doesn't look too out of place in the scenery, even if you figure that the sun was coming through the clouds to shine on him at that moment. Though the sunny foreground just looks awesome by that cloudy mountain. I love that!




For these last two pictures, I actually slightly blurred the scan in photoshop, because my scanner was bringing out all the white spots between colors and making it way too sharp. This way, it actually looks more like the real drawing. although in the real one, you don't notice the lines on the mountains behind him so much.



And voila! I hope his parents like it, and we'll be excited to meet our new cousin this Christmas!