Happy Birthday Sweetie! (2022)

Tomorrow is my boyfriend’s birthday! And every year, I paint something sweet for him to commemorate that special day. This year, we spent the weekend with this family: Saturday his mother and brothers with partners were over for a BBQ, and tonight his two grown sons and their partners are coming over for dinner. And today, I want to share a kawaii digital painting I made for him!

The Start

As usual, I started sketching us using the Medium Airbrush, but for the outfit I went for Moist Wax out of the added-on F-TOON Crayon brushes. I figured that the crayon gives a more cloth-like texture. A new layer was made for each shape and parts to facilitate resizing and repositioning when needed. So far so cute!

Adding Details

Once I was happy with the basic drawing, I went about introducing some textures and details. Great time to play around with my AJ Gold Rush as well as my Lights brushes! Both add-ons purchased separately. The party hats were the most obvious to start with; using clipping mask, I scattered the Glitter Fill in Silver before adding the streamers on the top with Luminous Bristles and Neon Pen. With the Bardot Crackling Ink, the smiling eyes were doodled in with my eyelashes done with silver Glitter Pen. The hair was further volumed up whilst introducing more strokes and topping up with the Big Hairy Brush. At this stage, I had a better idea of what color the background should be and switched to mint green.

The Background

And now more fun begins! What to do with the background? And how can I make it festive looking? Metallic and luminosity I felt would not be a good idea as the subjects are already adored with them. I didn’t want to overdo it! So how about working on colors instead? I was curious about some of the Fur brushes and although it’s meant for animals, why not try them as background patterns too? Hence I spread some large-sized Smooth Curly Fur in another green shade and adjusted the Blending Mode to Linear Burn to achieve that neon green. A few drops of Splotch Round in the Watercolor brushes were then incorporated in the same layer. Love combination of the runny effect from the fur and the roundness from the watercolor brush! Then I drew in some red hearts with the Moist Wax brush for that playful crayon-like texture. And now look!!

I hope my boyfriend will like this painting! He fully supports my creative hobby and finds it sweet that I’m into kawaii things so I’m pretty sure he’ll appreciate it. Besides we both look so happy together in this painting which reflects how we feel about each other! I have so much fun every year creating something sweet like this for him, and with all the ongoing drama about my old apartment not being sold, we could do with some positivity now. Happy Birthday, HJ, and happiness for the years to come!