Deconstruction of Wai's Work

I choose to deconstruct this illustration by Wai as you could see the full face of the girl. In alot of Wais illustrations you cannot see the full face, jus the side or a glimpse of the front.

                         I began by drawing the basic shape of the face with guide lines for where the eyes, nose and lips should go. Then I drew the face without the guide lines.

 

                           I then started to add in the eyes which look very alien like my basic sketches, then the nose which is very small and has little detail

 I then added the lips which are very full but also have little detail. The last step was the hair and the body, as you can see I missed out a line of hair but have added it in on Adobe Illustrator.

The reason I choose Wai as one of my illustrators is that I love her style its really simple but it looks effortless and chic. I also have a few books at home which her illustrations are on the front cover. I had always admired them and when I seen a book with those illustrations on it, always picked it up to buy. I only discovered Wai had illustrated them when I started to research her. I also love how most of her illustrations have a background - they tell a full story. They also have specific colour schemes which I think gives Wai's illustrations a unique aspect.

This is my finished version of Wai's illustration, focusing on the face. To do this I scannned my outline into the computer and opened it into coral draw. Using the 3 point curve tool I traced around the outline. This gave the illustration smooth lines. I changed the colours of the lines in coral draw and I then exported my image as an EPS file and placed it into photoshop. I had to rastersize the outline image so I could select areas and build up on the outline to create my version of Wai's illustration. Once in photoshop I used a base colour for each area then on new layers built up shading and used the gaussian blur tool to shade. I added a layer just above the outline layer and coloured over the lines so they matched perfectly.
Overall I feel that this illustration could be better because the shading lines for the hair are not perfect but I really like the facial features.  I feel that this illustration was rushed because at the start I thought it wouldn't take as long to do as my other photoshop illustrations so this illustration was the last one that I done. However I do think the colours and the outline look good.

Image of Wai's illustration can be found at: http://www.illustrationweb.com/image.aspx?sz=760&image_id=53555&fitw=y&src=hires&name=image_26725.jpg