Mission Commission! Pt 2

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well, I said I'd be going over both of the commissions that I had been delaying on showing, but wanted them both to have their own blog page dedicated to it, so here we go! This is the second of the two commissions! If you haven't looked at the first one, go check it out, though you don't need to see the first part of this to understand what is going on with the commission here.

For those who are curious though but don't feel like re-reading or checking back on the previous blog post, I was tasked with two commissions that were being bought as Christmas presents for the client's son and daughter. Due to that I delayed talking about them to avoid any spoilers for the kids if they happened to read my blog. Last week was the commission I made for the son. This week is the commission I made for the daughter.

Similar to the first commission, this one also was one that featured two different people. The first being the daughter herself, while the second was a boy I didn't know myself, but I was asked to draw based on a realistic painting of the two of them. My task was to make a manga/anime-esque picture of the same scene as the painting. So, unlike the previous picture I did where I had a lot of reference in the art style, this one would be more applying my art style to something closer to real life. I've done similar things before based on photo references, so it wasn't ridiculously hard, and it also gave me some colour references as well, which helps, especially since I didn't have to estimate hair colour quite as much as I needed to with the previous commission.

Unfortunately, as the picture doesn't belong to me, I don't feel like I can show it here, as much as I'd like to. But essentially its the daughter and a boy listening to music through shared earbuds while on a bus traveling down a road with blossoming trees either side.

With this reference picture in mind, however, I began with a sketch picture first, though I only drew the inside of the bus as the sketch since outside the windows wasn't as clear ad so would be done with minimal line art to keep that vagueness.

As you can see, not much in terms of background details at this point. But, as mentioned, those come a bit later since they were to be indistinct thanks to the bus windows. The main sketch art here was for the people themselves and to help visualise where the windows themselves would be so I would know where the bus ends and windows begins. Since the characters themselves were the main focus, I had to be sure I knew where they would be, details and the like, though this was only the rough sketch. Some slight adjustments were made in the line art, however. For example, fixing a few facial proportions on the male's the ear and hairline felt a little out of place in the initial sketch.

By the time I got to line art, I had adjusted the mistakes that I noticed, so it ended up like this (if you pardon my terrible photography, as usual - I should learn to screenshot on a windows laptop...)

Admittedly, it was only after this was done that I realised I was missing part of the window - one of the upper bars. Whoopsy! I later added that in after I had taken the picture, but before I added the colour. As you can see, the boy no longer looks like his hair is trying to pull back off his head by being too far back. Not much to really say here other than I had a few adjustments requested by the client, such as removing the girl's tie, but beyond that, they were happy to give me the go ahead to start on the colour. As mentioned, the realistic painting gave me plenty of colour references.

With the flat colours, I focused first on the foreground so I knew exactly where everything inside the buss would be. With that done, I could then spend time on the windows to make them seem like they were after the rain, to work out the lighting from the sun etc. After that I could then once again focus on the inside to add the lights and shadows. Once it was done, I was also asked to ad the names of the girl and boy at the bottom.

Much as before, I'm showing the photograph here, though I'll later be adding the actual finished version to my DA page.

As you can see, the lightning is coming from the left window somewhat. The outside of the windows are indistinct as the windows themselves are marked by watermarks and aren't the main focus. The colours are also somewhat muted in comparison to the more brightly coloured previous commission, partly due to the colour references, and partly because the scene here gave me a different feel. Less 'action' manga and more slice of life subtler tones.

Much as the previous picture, the client was happy with the resulting image and I sent the finished product over to them and was paid for the work. 

I'll admit I had a lot of fun with these. I also finished them at a good time as the very evening I finished this one was the evening of my worst battle with gravity and ice that resulted in me almost face-planting off a pavement into a road that pretty much jolted my joins. Not sure my wrists would have appreciated more art after that. 

Would you call that lucky or unlucky, I wonder?

Either way, I hope that you enjoyed my rambles about these two commissions and will look forwards to seeing them both on my DA soon enough :)

Until next time!

Tara