LifeBook: Goddess Qualities Spread - Part 1

Ugh. I know the spread isn't finished, but I'm totally fried. Looks like I'm going to have to allow more time for LifeBook assignments in the future...

My first run at a three-quarter portrait was horrible. The features were in the wrong places relative to the face, relative to each other.... Shudder!

For my second try, I started with a reference photo.

However much the features look right in the photo, they look just plain weird before there is shading or color. I kept thinking, Really? There's that much distance from there to there? Wow. After much drawing and erasing and drawing and erasing, there was a sketch... (I wish I'd taken a picture of it rather than putting the 9x10 paper on the 8.5x11 scanner. It made for some weird shadows.)

I stared at it for days, terrified that I'd ruin it when I started adding color. Eeeeek!

Deep breaths....

Here goes... First the shadows...

Then the first couple of layers of skin tone...

This was followed by layer after layer of color, to get...

The next step is to add the fold-out piece, a background, and some journaling. I managed to glue this page and the half-page foldout to a piece of scrapbook paper. Of course, the first thing I noticed was that, now that there's more paper, the chopped-off elbow seems weird.

Sooo.... Add the rest of the arm and try to match the colors... Or, make the fold-out page obviously NOT part of the picture... What to do... What to do....?

Addendum: I decided to add the rest of the arm. While I was at it, I noticed more shadows that I'd missed before, so I added those too.