Ello, Steemians, today I present you my entry for @jacinta.sevilla's Mini Art Contest where the theme was - strawberries!

The concept behind this drawing is based on a childhood past time of mine where I used to eat a whole bunch of strawberries and then smear the juice over my lips like a kind of gloss. Edible makeup! It also got me thinking back to one of the trips me and my family took up to the chilly Cameron Highlands where strawberries grew. I actually got lost in the strawberry farms because I was just in awe at the sheer amount of them as a child.

Process

I do my usual steps of first sketching out my composition. In the lining portion, I decided I wanted to do something a little different. Since I enjoyed doing the flat colouring for a previous contest entry last year (lol), I wanted to incorporate it a little bit with my regular drawing method.

In this case, I wanted the plantation, the strawberries and the hair of the girl to be flat coloured. I drew glasses on this character in the sketch but I wanted them to be white and flat so I'll be adding that near the end of my process.

I do my regular process of colouring for the lined areas of the drawing. While doing the shading, I try to keep the base colours fairly warm (reds, pinks, oranges) but with a cool tone. This is to reference the bright reds I saw in the strawberry farm that contrast with the cool weather from my memories.

Before I move forward, I want to explain a bit of the references I used for this image. I don't really colour with cool tones very often. My palette tends to be fairly warm and bright. This time around I wanted to do something cool and a little bit more pastel-ish.

Screenshot from the show, Steven Universe

So I used this screenshot from Steven Universe as my point of reference. It even has strawberries in it! Lucky me!

Then I moved on to do a lot of the "flat" areas of the drawing. Unlike the lined areas, I tried to make them a bit more soft and textured. I didn't want to overwork it too much because I want the eye to quickly register the shapes in the picture without much distraction. Plus, I'll be blurring the final image a little soon so I didn't want to put in work at a spot where it's not really going to be noticed in a bit.

Remember the glasses? Here they are! A simple white framed pair with pink lenses just to tie everything together. I thought that the typical black frames would feel a bit too heavy for this drawing. I also added some lines to the leaves to add a bit more...leafness.

Lastly, added a bit of a Gaussian blur and my little signature stamp in the top right corner. 2018 edition now.

Process in GIF form below

That is it for now. Hope you liked and enjoyed reading it. If you have time, do check out the other entries as well and to support the contest as well~

See you next post~