May 11th: A Mother's Day Gift

Most mother's days I send my mom a card.  On the rare occasion, flowers.  My mom lives pretty far away so I can't exactly clean the house for her.  But since I'm trying my best to get back into art, I decided that I'd draw something for her.  It was hard to find something that wasn't complete cheese.

I chose this picture because, even though my mom's no longer a mom with a little baby, I knew it would bring tears to her eyes.  My technique on this drawing was simply layering.  I just kept making the shading darker and darker until it looked decent.  I find it difficult to layer on skin sometimes because I use an artist chamois for smooth skin tone and when I do this, of course all my fine stub lines are smudged out.  So I essentially have to keep drawing and re-drawing lines.  The only way to prevent that I think would be to get the exact tone needed from the chamois right away.  But I'm not that ninja.   I ran out of time (as I always tend to do) and I don't think I got the exact desired effect in the end.

It's ok.  I wanted to make the inside darker.  I really wanted those little baby feet to stand out.  Also, the thumbs are only sort of hinted at here.  There's not much to them.  Just a few simple lines.  I don't know if that makes this drawing better or worse.  Hands and feet are really hard to draw.  I know that a lot of artists struggle with them.  It's hard to make fingers look like fingers and not some deformity... regardless, for something I did last minute, I'd say it passes.  And my mom loved it.  ;)