I digitally illustrated a portrait of my wife as an alluring android. She has recently made of hobby of photo manipulation and she provided for me a preliminary photo mock up that I used as reference. I have a long history of illustrating her in many styles. This one is definitely unique and amazing.

The Finished Illustration

It was her call to make the eyes different color and styles. It really sells the robotic look, otherwise it can pass as a human sporting nice jewelry and funny tattoos. The glow on the necklace also emphasizes the science fiction appeal (as if the Matrix-style background didn't do that already).

When adding the shadows, I was torn between a more cel-style shading method and having it blended out and soft. I think I leaned more towards the softer shadow lines but kept a strong highlight shine on the face. I felt because the drawing itself was pretty realistic, the shading should match.

Because I used a reference photo taken of my wife, I didn't start my illustration with a wire-frame drawing. I jumped straight to the sketching and pretty much nailed the design right off the bat. All my years of drawing has given me the ability to look at something and copy it successfully on my canvas, similarly to having a live model in an art room setting. I almost always use a larger brush size when drawing my sketch. I think the bold lines make it easier to draw without the stress of having it perfect.

The Line Art

I drew my lines for this piece similarly to the way I did for my Zero Suit Samus Illustration. I didn't use my typical G-Pen with anti-aliasing turned off. Instead, I chose to use a soft edged brush. Thanks to the pressure levels of my Wacom Mobilestudio Pro 16, my lines would vary in width and darkness depending on how strong hard I pressed. Having some of my lines end softly allows them to blend better once the color is applied.

The Flat Colors

I used a separate layer for my colors. Using the polygon selection lasso tool I tapped away on my screen until I created a selection around my shapes, and filled them in with color one at a time. Because my line art was soft, it already looks as if some areas were shaded by default. I would eventually go over my lineart to give them either color or depth (especially in the lines that are cut-outs on the skin.

The Photo Reference

Here is the photograph that my wife took of herself and then manipulated in Adobe Photoshop. She did this for her own collection of photo manipulation, but I loved it so much that I decided to illustrate it for myself. I did make some minor adjustments, such as reverse cropping and drawing in more of the shoulders and chest. She is my alluring android!

That's pretty much all I have to say about this piece. I hope you found this post entertaining, educational, or encouraging. I want to inspire all amateur artists to keep drawing and never give up. If you have any requests for future posts, please let me know with a comment below!