Jungle Girl

It’s almost Christmas but with the wider spread of the Omicron variant, we may be facing more restrictions, including shopping, socializing and traveling abroad! Reminiscing our past vacations, there is nothing like missing traveling to warmer destinations during this time of the year. Little One tells us she would one day like to visit a jungle and be surrounded by green among all the plants and leaves. And of course I wanted to paint about it whilst having a practice with my Procreate art!

The Background

Unlike the previous times on digital painting, I decided to begin with the background. Light orange was firstly chosen as the background color as a random choice. Then I began practicing more with textures by playing around with stamps and brushes before adding a new layer to paint in some plants. A useful tool I bought as add-on were Leafy Mix and Leafy Solid which were included in Jason ‘s Expressive Brushes. So for amazing!

Little One

Time to draw Little One! I added a layer once again but shifted it to one below the leaves so that she is being partially covered by the foliage, hence standing in between layers. For this, I used the usual Medium Airbrush except for the hair which was painted in various fun colors with a Dry Square Inker brush. Some retouch was done on the hair with th P5 Hairy brush also by Jason’s. For each part of Little One, separate layers applied to make it easier to resize or reposition areas and use clipping masks where needed. Another great tip when having the subject like Little One between layers is to hide the one on top so you can see what you are painting; in this case, I hid the layer with all the foliage. I decided next to switch the background color to mint green and to soften the background, added some splashes of pink.

Finishing Up

I struggled a bit with the face, especially the eyes. First they were too small and looked a bit hidden amongst all the overwhelming foliage so I made them large. I kind of like them extra large as it adds some accent to the entire image. Then to make her look even cuter, I tried something I rarely do: make her cheeks all pink! It worked well as it compliments well with the dominating green in the background and reflects the splashes of the pink there. The painting looked great but then I wanted to incorporate some ground on which Little One stands. In between the texture layer of the background and Little One, I scribbled in some textures in a darker shade of orange I had for the original background. The background was further tweaked a bit more to make the jungle look more full. And finally!

And what a fun session that was again! For the first time, I made the subject in between layers to give more dimension to the painting. Pleased that it turned out so well! I’m also happy to see some progress with my digital art, seeing that practice makes perfect although it doesn’t matter if it’s perfect or not. What counts is that the painting is still cute and makes me smile. Just like seeing Little One having fun playing in the jungle!