Given it was black and white, no Flag depicted in the photo, and overall a fairly poor quality pic I had to roll up my sleeves and do some home work. I researched the uniform hues, my Dad's MOS insignia (Military Occupational Specialty... ie... his job), and other aspects in an attempt to breathe life and authenticity into the final illustration. Admittedly, omitting Old Glory would have been more authentic however more modern military graduation photos have the Flag as a backdrop... so I decided to add it for color\detail interest.
Overall this was a very fun\special personal project. Hope you dig it!
Awesome job! Do you have the original scanned, by chance? I'd love to see it against the photo. My dad is retired from the Army as well, and this is a great idea for a gift. The only thing I think would really make the portrait pop would be if you got a little more texture in his face.
ReplyDeleteI did this portrait a few days ago and was getting frustrated by how platic-y it was looking from the hard/soft round brushes, so I used a chalk brush and got a pretty convincing skin texture from it: http://chromatree.com/albums/secret-garden/portrait-practice-2.png