This is a gift for a friend of mine (nectargrapes on tumblr) of her OC Laila Rose. I just really wanted to get some practice in and drawing pretty girls is always fun :)

I feel like my skill level really jumped recently. I was talking to my sister (who is also an artist) about how sometimes something Just Clicks and suddenly you're able to produce work that you've been striving to create for awhile. Anyway, I felt like it would be cool to see how my progress also differs. I almost always take a bunch of in-progress screenshots to show to my sister and girlfriend while I'm working.

1. Creating and refining my sketch. Procreate finally added a reference option and I'm obsessed with it. I used the reference here to get a feeling for how I wanted to shape the face, but once I had all the basic stuff down, I was able to change up the proportions and angle to fit what I wanted better.

2. Flat color and some shading. I almost always start with the eyes because they're my favorite part. I shade in layers with progressively deeper colors, and then I block in the nose/brow area with more blush colors. When I'm doing this, I almost exclusively use the hard airbrush and vine charcoal brushes.

4. Added more details to the face. I also started working on the hair. I ended up cropping the image around this step so I wouldn't have to worry about the second arm.

5. Finally the hand appears.

6. I finally decided that I wanted to commit to the line art for this piece, especially since I wanted to keep her dress really simple.

7. Like always, when I was done drawing, I switched over to gimp for some final touches. I corrected the colors a bit, added a texture on top and moved her eyes around slightly.