M family...again!

Also this year, I did portraits for the "M" family! This is the third year in a row that I've had the chance to draw these cousins, and it seemed to make the process that much easier because I didn't have to wonder at the exact color of their eyes or hair: I'd done it before! It was fun to see how they've grown over the last year! The background colors here are similar to the blues in the last post; for some reason the very lightest blues aren't picked up by my camera very well, and the brown of the paper shows through, so you can't see how smooth the color transitions really are.
First we have this cute brother and sister:





It was fun drawing this girl because it wasn't the typical smile. The photo for the above girl was taken in fairly low light, and her face was dark and a little blurry, but I attempted to draw it with more of a "blurry" style with few hard edges, and I think it turned out great! It was actually fun and kind of freeing.. It was similar to the way I drew this cat a few years ago:

 Then there were these three siblings, the youngest of which was a newborn when I drew her last year! I had some interesting challenges with these too. For the baby, the picture I was initially given had some kind of phone filter that made it all soft-edged; cool for a photo, but really hard to draw for a drawing. At the last minute her mom posted a new picture of her on facebook; it was crisp and in focus, but the top half of her head wasn't in the shot. So I used it for the face, then drew an imaginary version of the bow from the first photo, as it was hard to see what her headband was like in this new photo. It turned out pretty good! Also, she was in a car seat, and I had to make up how her shirt was, which is why there are no folds or anything fancy to be seen in the cloth. My photo is slightly more yellow than the real drawing. (all three have very similar colors, the photos were just taken under different lighting conditions.)






















As for the brother, the photo I worked from was black and white! Again, his first photo had a weird filter on it so I couldn't really see the shape of his nose or anything. So I took the black and white photo to draw the details, then loosely borrowed colors from the first photo. Not bad. I think he looks older in this photo than he is in real life, but I hope his family won't think so.

 Finally, the oldest sister turned out great. Her photo was taken in sunlight and was just right for drawing.

This time around, drawing these kids was a breeze!