Boy and His Gator 2 - Complete

Whoops! Mom found out about boy's secret alligator friend.


This is the second illustration in the three-part series, "Boy and His Gator". The first piece can be viewed here: [link]

Pencil lines + coloring in Photoshop CS3.

In contrast to the first image, where I used cool shadows to give the scene an ambient, calm feeling of two friends sharing a private moment, for this second piece, I used warmer shadow tones. I felt that the red tones helped heighten the intensity and harshness of the scene. I imagine mom storming into the room and turning on the light.

Quick tutorial regarding the denim texture:
The denim texture comes from [link] (Thanks Messa for posting such a useful pack of textures!) After I finished painting the shadows and highlights on the jeans, I made a new layer, shrunk down one of the textures and stitched it together over the length of the jeans. Then I set the layer to soft light and 50% opacity. Finally, I used the dodge tool over the highlighted areas of the jeans to soften the intensity of the texture.

Boy and His Gator 1 - Complete

Boy and His Gator WIP 2

"Not in MY house, young man!"


Picture #2 for Boy and His Gator. Out of necessity to get Mom properly placed in the picture, and still show her displeased hand-on-hip body language, I changed the orientation. I had originally planned to make all the pictures in the series the same size, but a taller format just works better in this case.

Just one more to go and then I move on to coloring.