Beach Portrait

A fun portrait to commemorate my friend’s significant birthday—made it while residing with them and maintaining the project’s confidentiality throughout the entire process.

An extra personal touch was the inclusion of a beloved but departed cat, Toby, into the illustration. It’s always special to honor a family friend in this way.

For this portrait, I tried a new digital painting technique; first rendering the image in grayscale and then used Procreate’s gradient mapping to add color. After that, I made a few tweaks and did some more detailed painting to get the final look.