Arturo Elena - Drawing Full Length Illustration

After recreating the simple components of Arturo's work, I am now going to try to reproduce one of his full-length illustrations.  The image which I have decided to copy is displayed below and I have chosen this particular drawing because I wanted to challenge myself.  I discovered that I was able to adapt my skills with relative ease in order to recreate Hanna's work however I feel that Arturo's will be more difficult because of the precise detail.  This is the reason why I have decided to test both my hand-drawing and Photoshop ability by attempting to reproduce one of Arturo's complex illustrations.

Arturo Elena's own illustration
Image available at: http://www.upkeeptheape.blogspot.com
[Accessed: 24 January 2012]

I decided that I would use Photoshop to create this illustration so I started by creating a new page in the Photoshop programme.  I then opened up the image of Arturo's work & used the move tool to drag it onto my working page.  Next, I set up my paintbrush and my smudge tool using number 23 and ensured that I had selected shape dynamics, scattering and smoothing.  On the shape dynamics option, I also had to adjust the size jitter to 20%, the minimum diameter to 10% and the angle jitter to 10%.  I then began by creating a new layer before starting to paint on the trousers using Arturo's original image which is essentially under my own work as a guide.   I applied different tones and shades of red to form the illusion of shading as shown below in the screenshot.

Screenshot showing the brush set up and the colour which was painted onto the trousers

 After applying a sufficient amount of colour using the paintbrush, I then used the smudge tool to blend and create a watercolour effect.  In order to use the tool effectively, I recommend that the smudge tool should be thought of as 'water' allowing you to dilute and blend your colour.  I then used the same tools to create the top however I had to work on the white and red stripes on different layers to allow me to blend effectively without mixing the two together.

Screenshot which shows the colour being added to the top

I continued to work on the illustration using the same previous method in order to create the facial details, hair, belt, shoes and jewellery and each section was built up stage by stage on new layers.  I personally feel that adding these smaller details at this point essentially makes it a little easier to add the skin-tone after.

Screenshot showing the facial features which have been added along with the hair and jewellery

I finally added the skin-tone to complete my illustration using the exact same method as before.  When I was finished I was able to 'hide' Arturo's original work by deselecting the eye logo on the appropriate layer which left me with my own version of his illustration.

Screenshot which demonstrates the skin-tone which has been added to finish the illustration

My finished illustration is shown below and I am delighted with the outcome as I feel that this technique has been successful in allowing me to create a similar result to Arturo's work.  Although this technique is quite a time-consuming and repetitive process, it is definitely worthwhile and I will undoubtedly use this method again to imitate Arturo's work.  

My finished illustration which represents a copied
version of Arturo's original drawing