An Illustrated Self Portrait

I’ve been wanting to practice my illustration skills a bit more recently, so when a coworker asked me to draw a doodle of myself for our company newsletter, I went a little bit overboard. Regardless, I had a lot of fun, and found myself continually coming back to it in my downtime, tweaking and playing with different techniques.

Here was my starting image — a photo that I took of myself on a hike.

After tracing the lines in Illustrator, I then brought the line work into Photoshop to add color and detail. I wanted to have a painterly appearance with blended colors and shades, as opposed to having clear lines and edges.