"The Service Flower" Appreciation Piece

This piece was quite the undertaking but it was truly worth the effort. I did have a lot of ups and downs with it though:

• I loved making the standing ears – something about the shape was very satisfying to me.

• You’ll see me go over Jay’s pose again and again, trying to refine the shape and make it look natural. The hip pop in particular gave me a lot of trouble. I finally got it done to my liking but I’m a perfectionist so it still took a bit.

• The ”treat bag hand” gave me a little trouble too. I tried using my own hand as a quick guide but it didn’t work like intended, so I nixed that idea.

• I turned Jay's earrings and watch metallic (I love doing that).

• I didn’t have any trouble with Daisy’s paws but I struggled with Leilani’s and Jasmine’s paws. I do remember having a medical issue the day I was working on Leilani’s paws so that’s probably why.

• Since the colors were too contrasting in Jasmine’s patterns, I turned them off so I could shade her figure. I did this with Daisy too.

• As I sketched things out, I realized how many pieces were in the background… and then I noticed. Vehicles. Four of them. I’ve always had a hard time drawing vehicles. Thankfully I found some good tutorials online to help me with these and knew that any further kinks would be blended out in the distance blur.

• I gathered swatches of colors for each background item and drew a mini version as a kind of color map. I use layers when I draw so different colors or parts often get their own layers to preserve lines and colors. There were 13 individual sections of items with several layers each which, unlabeled, would be impossible to sort through. Folders exist for a reason so each section got its own folder, labeled with a number to map it out correctly. This saved me a lot of headache.

• Random shout out to the gradient tool, which made recreating this sunset a ton easier. I enjoyed sampling the sky in order to capture the colors correctly.

• I probably didn’t need to separate as many colors or shade as much as I did, given the looming blur, but my perfectionist tendencies took over again.

All in all, I’m very happy with how this piece turned out and am so happy that it was so well received! ✦