"Me And The Future Missus" Break-It-Down

So, as I posted a few weeks ago, my primary task for myself and my fiancee's wedding is to do the stationary. The invitations, save the dates, map, and whatever other bits of paperwork that need doing. So far, I've completed the save the date notice and about 80% of the invitation. I posted the save the date a few weeks ago, but also decided to post a couple of work in progress photos I took, so that you can see how the image came about. So, without further ado...

The first thing I did was a couple of thumbnails and small sketches. Once I was happy with these, it was a matter of recreating the drawings at double size. Not scanned and sketched, redrawn.

Here's the final drawing of my character. Well, I lie. This is actually a drawing that got scrapped. When I got around to painting the skin tone, it came out too orange. I looked like an Oompa Loompa. The painting had to be scrapped and redone.

Stage one of Gill's painting. Pants, boots and top done. At this stage, I paused for about two days. Next would come the skin tone, and that stage always terrifies me!

Skin tone done! With a sigh of relief, this stage came off without a hitch first time.

This is the final painting for my character. I'd painted myself a bit longer and slenderer than I actually am, but I could make adjustments in Photoshop. Also, my head isn't quite that big in real life. Quite.

I was happier with Gill's painting. The skin tone came out slightly better and I liked her design more. I painted her dress with acryllic to give it a bit of texture. While this doesn't come across very clearly in the digital form, it's quite nice in the actual painting. Also, the colours of this image would require a bit of work in Photoshop due to the slightly red and blue hues that came out with the photograph. I'd prefer to have scanned the artwork, but I lack a decent A3 scanner. For now.

And the final image. The sunburst pattern and text were done in Photoshop. The flourishes, in Illustrator. A bit of colour correction and a bit of a colour bleed from the bottom corner, for no other reason than I wanted to experiment a bit.

So there you have it. I learned quite a lot from the process. Not everything was a complete success. But I took the lessons from it and applied them to the next project for the wedding, the actual invitations. They're looking a whole lot better. But alas, they cannot be posted for a while yet. But they will come eventually!