Painting a figure tutorial

For this month's tutorial, we will go in a different direction. If you have looked at my blog or portfolios at all, you will see a lot of architectural and industrial illustration. But as illustrators, we need to be able to tackle anything that comes our way. Here is an image where I had to paint a person. Not only that, but it was a specific likeness, so it's a portrait, if you will. Even worse (here it comes) it was of a woman. Why do I say that? Well, women are harder to paint than men. Generally, they need to look beautiful, feminine, and soft. This requires a different and more subtle approach than what you would do for a man. And please, don't shoot the messenger, but women seem to be a bit more sensitive about how they are depicted; maybe it's just our culture. Anyway, This is the image I painted that was used as part of a series in a magazine ad campaign.

In my next post, I'll start breaking the file down and show you how it was done.