Thursday, September 25, 2008

a friend of a friend


i did this yesterday for a friend's husband who wanted to give this to his friends as part of a wedding gift to them. i did one of them before and that's how they got the idea to have me do another one for their friends. so after about 8 hours of tracing shapes in illustrator, this is the finished product!
i took the photo into Illustrator and turned that into a template so it fades into the back. then i traced shapes starting with things that are towards the back. i used a lot of layers to make it easier to keep things in the back like shirts and inside of jackets behind stuff that are towards the front like skin and hair. the original photo is of the two of them in a bar so he was actually holding a beer bottle and she had a glass of wine or sangria or something. didn't think that would be quite appropriate to include in a wedding gift. (the glass of wine woulda been fine but certainly not the beer.) SO i had to get rid of those and make up stuff behind them - namely his jacket and shirt. having colored stuff in photoshop really helped to pick out the shapes of shadows and bright spots.
this turned out better than the first one i did of my friends which is unfortunate for them but inevitable just cuz one's bound to get better the more they do. it was also a really cute picture that i was using to work with. i was itching to take it into photoshop instead and start painting it since i'm more comfortable doin that now than selecting and coloring. =P
i don't know the two people getting married but i surely hope they like this!
(i opted not to post the original photo i used to respect their privacy.)

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