A drawing: from beginning to end

I really like to see the proccess of how a drawing gets to its end point. Even if I'm the one drawing it. I find the proccess is more fun to see after it's over...not so much while it's going on since there is a lot of frustration when I can't get something right. I am just not skilled enough to know how to fix a problem even if I can see what the problem is...and I can't always see the problem, I just know it's not right. So, here's the latest drawing I did, as I went along. I hope you enjoy the proccess too.

First, I got the basic shapes and shading areas put down on paper.

Then I started doing very loose shading.

After the loose shading, I started on my dad first with more detailed shading lines.

Here, I've smoothed out the initial shade lines and put in more detail. I then started on my mom's shading and detail. At this point, everything had gone smoothly. I was instantly happy with how my dad turned out. I could definitely recognize him. But I messed up on the inital sketch in of my mom and something wasn't right and I knew it, I just couldn't tell what. I continued on with it though, hoping I could figure it out and fix it as I worked.

In this pic, I could see one of my problems, her right eye was drooping and it doesn't do that in real life...also, one eye was bigger than the other. I did multiple eye surgeries on her...trying to fix it... Still no hair or clothes worked on yet.


Close up of my dad's face. Yep, that's him all right!

They have hair and clothes, finally. But my mom was in the middle of one of her eye surgeries. Originally they were wearing flowers but I took them out when I filled in the clothes. Hair is tough for me but I felt I did ok...once again, messed up my mom's hair more than my dad's.

I thought I was finished here. But still had a couple eye surgeries left to do and some minor shading issues.

My parents with their present. See, no droopy eye problems in real life. ;o)

I started it in May as a mother's/father's day gift but didn't finish until about an hour before my flight to go see them in September, still not completely happy with how my mom turned out but happy enough that I could give it to them without it bothering me too much. So it took me a few months. Some of that time spent taking a break from it because I was so frustrated.