Gift giving is one of my primary love languages, and I have been known to use my creative talents to give the gift of art! This was the case years ago when I illustrated some close friends of mine to honor their friendship and their marriage. They are the Fear Family (yes, that's their last name) and my children and theirs are best of friends. As a husband and wife duo, they really set a good example of companionship, love, and respect.

The Sketch

This drawing conveys several things about this unique couple. First, they are pretty traditional and humble. The husband is chivalrous and would lay down his life for his wife, or lift her high and support her in every way. The way they are looking into each other's eyes proves that they only have eyes for each other. Lastly, the wife's bare feet is actually her personal preference and shows her free-spirit nature.

The Line Art

When illustrating this one, I was still rather new to using my Wacom Bamboo tablet and Corel Painter Essentials. I takes a while to get used to moving your hand to the side while looking straight ahead at the screen. I feel like this made it difficult to draw as well as I do today, where I could draw directly on my screen using the Wacom Mobilestudio Pro. Evidence of my difficulty at the time can be seen with the proportions and shape of their hands and feet.

The Flat Colors

The colors I chose for their clothes are pretty accurate to some of the attire they wore at the time. As a mater of fact, I actually designed the graphics for the husband's shirt, which I made for the company that he and I both worked for at the time. I would render that logo in the final stages of the illustration.

The Finished Illustration

Unlike most of my other illustrations, I did not use hard lines for my cel-style shading. I used Corel's soft brushes and blending tools to give this a softer look. I also colored the line art (referred at as color holds) but left the outer edge black. I honestly couldn't come up with something good for the background, so I left it blank. I don't normally leave my figures standing in emptiness, but I didn't want anything to distract the focus of these two love birds.