Let It Snow, Already!

The weather lady keeps warning us we'll be snowed in during a vicious winter storm -- but I've been waiting a few weeks now and zilch! Stop panicking the locals, lady! The grocery store's dangerously low on milk, bread and bathroom tissue. While we wait for the looming storm, I thought I'd post this wintry illustration and some work-in-progress steps.

1) As usual, I start with a pencil sketch. I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach this piece, so I ended up sketching in way too much detail on the snowflakes. Did I waste a bunch of time? Maybe. But better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

2) In a shocking move, I then abandon all that laborious detail work and trace the pencil-line with color in Photoshop. Mostly blue, to convey the feeling of cold, with some warmer spots around that little meatball kid. Underneath all that I threw in a gradient and then roughed it up a little with some blending and brush strokes.

3) Then, as it turns out, I do need all that pencil detail in the snowflakes after all. Brilliant! So I flipped the pencil layer back on and painted around my sketch to add some dimension to the snowflakes. There's probably an easier way of doing all this, but time's on my side. I also painted in the kid.

4) Finally, I smudge in a shadow underneath our little friend to ground him. And, speaking of ground, I also threw in a crispy-crunchy snow texture over the background to push that icy-cold feeling. And as I look out my back door, I see that most of the crispy-crunchy snow in the yard has melted. Step it up, weather lady. -v