July 29, 2014 Through Love's Eyes 1

Love ignores life's changes brought on by time and finds a bond between two souls.

Love is not a physical thing. The good looks and bedtime fun and games can't survive the test of time. Too much is placed on the physical attributes that masquerade as love. Love may begin that way but unless there is a willingness to go beyond and bond together in all things it will not survive. Give and Take, Laughter and Tears, Falling and Lifting up, Sacrifice and Gain are all a part of the bonding in love. It is a true bonding of two souls into one unified being. It is not unheard of to finish one another's sentences when this happens. Knowing one another to the Nth degree. 

 "My dear friends, let us love one another, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love."

The New Jerusalem Bible. (1985). (1 Jn 4:7–8). New York: Doubleday.

I have been mostly absent this past week or so. My DW dropped a bombshell on me by asking me to do an image of her from her favorite photograph. Yes I did hesitate and think about it. I am honored that she would think enough of my talents, however rough they might be, to ask so I agreed. The photo she wanted me to do the image from is, in my opinion, HORRIBLE. She does not really want me to include it in my post, which is fine with me. That said a lot. Needless to say it took two tries to get it to work. She says she likes the first one too but I could tell that is not completely true. I came as close as I could. Any who, this is my draft drawing. 

Don't let this drawing fool you. It goes through quite a few changes before it is finished. The tough part of this was that there were NO HAIR FEATURES VISIBLE on the photograph. Not even my photo program would bring them out. I had to grab my magic lamp, rub hard and ask the genie what the heck do I do now? He just shrugged and said "You are on your own."

Cherokee even put his hands in the air and gave me that "leave me out of this one" look. Some friend. LOL. After a day and a half of searching the Internet for Hair style Ideas I came up with what you see on the left. I drew the rough outlines then added the details in pencil. I also added dimension to the ear ring and ear in pencil to be sure where the edges and details would be. Once that was done I followed up with a final penned in detail as you can see on the right hand side of the drawing. Whew! Now we finish the Left hand side in pen. Nice Huh?

 Next we start with coloring using Copics T6 for the Darkest spots in the hair. As we proceed it will seem as though the facial features are not correct but they are. Trust me.

Next we Fill in the hair color with T5, T4, V99, V25 and BV29. Black hair is actually very dark shades of many different colors. The sheen in bright light is often deep violet or purple. Yes, Jill had jet black hair when she was younger.

Now we use the 0 (zero) blender pen to lighten the areas that would shine in the light. It is not a cartoon shine I know but in the actual piece it is what makes it more realistic and not a cartoon.

Remember those tiny eyes that didn't seem to fit? Add some details, color (E39,T7, White uni-ball Signo) and correct ever so slightly, pen in the eyebrows, eyelashes, color the lips (R24, R22, RV21) and ear ring (atyou Spica 16 buttermilk, 19 Sand) and perfect so far.There are five more images to show since this was more complicated to color. These will be shown with minimal comment

The usual contour highlighting for deep shadow. (E01)

General color fill in contour prep. (E00)

Final skin smoothing and pre-shadow blending. (E0000)

At this point we begin shadowing with BV0000, RV00, RV0000 on the nose, cheeks, neck, chin and ears. The eyes also the eyes get a very slight shadowing with C3 to add dimension. The final image needed only small adjustments to finish it. But I've bored yo enough so here is the final image. Hope you like it.

The hair looked like someone took a large pair of shears and cut it off on the right side so I added some color E41 where the shoulders are in the photo. 

Part of the reason I agreed to do this image is because the end of August is our 51st wedding anniversary. It has been an extraordinary voyage to this point. What better way to say thank you an I Love you than this. (I know you are reading this dear and no I will not take this part out.)

I guess you have noticed that this post says "Through Love's Eyes 1) Now it's my turn. I have a favorite picture as well. It was taken on our 10th wedding anniversary just before we went to church to have our wedding blessed. It will be my next project. Thank You for stopping by and supporting me in a life long desire to do this kind of art. Until then, remember, LOVE THE DETAILS 

(Just an addendum: Jill and I met when she was 4 and I was 6. Didn't start actual dating until our teens so get your jaw off the floor. It was a long time and not one second is regretted.)