To do a second portrait of Tessa McNeff, this is my photo reference that I was using while working in Adobe Illustrator CC.
Stage one begins with the contour outlining of Tessa which are in red strokes. I used the pen tool and pencil tool to outline her hair, face, chest, and dress top. For the dress, I decided to include guide lines for the folds and creases of her dress.
After I outlined her figure, I switched back to the color picker tool, and sampled the photo for like color ranges, and then set them into a custom color range for the project. Here, the colors in view are for the face skin shadows.
My trick with the color palette is to group colors ranges together off to the left. I have always liked to add in an empty color group in between my selections. This makes it easier to find my colors with the various brushes and gradients I will do later for the project.
My process begins with multiple gradient radials stacked ontop one another. After I have completed this step with the radial gradients, I switch gears into the bristle brush tool. I have already painted in her lips, nose, eyes, and now surrounding detail of her face.
I have begun to repeat the process of radial gradients for her chest, and shoulders. I am placing a gradient into position in this shot for her chest. I have her photo off to the side as a reference for the process.
Step five is one of two steps for her hair. I have given a gradient base for her hair, and began to build up her hair with the bristle brush tool. This process, involved multiple groups of bristle brush paths with multiple opacities for the hair.
Step six was the second hair painting step. For this step, I included in the reflective lighting. In some areas of her hair I did use the blob brush tool, at a small size, for small strokes.
In stage seven, I shifted my efforts to her dress. I did this in stages, like her hair, by doing her left side first, with the lighting by painting in different opacity strokes and color shades of greens, browns, and tans. Did you notice her necklace?
Stage eight, was the right side portion of her dress. This was the difficult part to work. The lighting is coming from her left side. I had to add in multiple grouped sections of bristle brush strokes to achieve the affect all in a wide range of darker greens and browns. The last part was to add in the shadowing with darker shades.
On the last stage, I did some final touch ups, in a side by side comparison.
Tessa McNeff 2 completed in Illustrator CC.
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