Digital drawing birthday card

My boyfriends birthday was coming up and in the past I have been creative with my card designs for him (see below and good luck card post), so I decided as it was his 21st to put extra effort into this card.

I had an idea to do a digital art one as it is not something that I have done before. I set about trying to find a good picture of the both of us as a reference for the card- a hard task as we really don't have that many pictures where we both look good!

I have blocked out our faces for privacy reasons (and because I really do not look great here)

I finally settle on this picture as we are holding drinks so it looks celebratory and so fits a 21st birthday card! I use sketchbook pro on my iPad to draw this image. To start the card I outline the skin first, tracing the picture and using a dropper to get the accurate colour of the skin. Using a different layers I add the hair and then the clothes and drinks. In order to get shading I use the airbrush tool and follow the shadows and highlights as they are in the picture. I wish I had the iPad with me to screenshot the step to step process- I will add it next time I go home if I can.

This is it when I am nearly finished. I used a red square on the picture so I knew where I wanted to trace and where I wanted to stop. As you may notice there is an error as my boyfriend's thumb is over the glass when it should be behind.

Fixed the thumb and glass problem and removed the square- this is starting to look good. I decide that I like the rough edges where you can see that I have stopped drawing as it looks cooler and more like I have 'sketched' it than if the edges were clean cut. I like how we have no faces and that you can clearly tell that it is us. This is what I imagined it would look like finished when I started making the card, however, curiosity gets the better of me and I attempt to draw the faces even though I am notoriously rubbish at drawing faces!

Although it doesn't turn out great, I am still learning! You cannot expect to be Van Gogh straight away. I think the best part was my nose and eyes as I the shading makes them less like they were drawn on and more 3D- but the rest of it is a shambles! When I showed this to my boyfriend he laughed and said, "Is that what you think you look like!". Anyway, I decide to make the card with no faces on.

This is the finished card. I was going to add more design to the background but I had left it so late as I had spent too much time drawing and I needed to send it off to get professionally printed so this is what I ended up with. I chose purple as that is my boyfriend's favourite colour and I chose yellow writing as opposites compliment and all that. Overall, I am happy with the design, I just wish I had more time to perfect those faces and to do nicer text and background on the card! On the positive side, my boyfriend couldn't believe that I made this as he said it is really good. I am glad he is happy!