Dear Chibi,

My sweet little P-chan, look how much you’ve grown! So curious and full of excitement and wonder…You really gave Daddy a big workout, didn’t you? :) Thank you Hubby for these beautiful photos and memories we’ll cherish forever.

Today I finally finished a “new” painting of Chinese actress Liu Yi Fei! Technically it’s not a new drawing since I reworked an existing piece I did four years ago. It looks pretty different though :) You can see the older versions here: Part 1, Part 2.

I’m really happy with how this turned out :) I had a lot of fun painting her face and skin. Blending skin tones used to be what I feared the most, but now that I’ve grasped the basic technique, it’s not as scary. It just requires a lot of patience and lots of brushing!

Her hair, accessories and dress do still look a little rough… I probably should have cleaned it up more but after spending so many hours on the face, it wasn’t too exciting XD (That net was pain to draw…it’s still actually my first rough line art..) Hopefully it doesn’t bring down the picture too much :)

Work In Progress:

(First frame is where I got up to four years ago)

Final version close up

Dear Chibi,

Yay! I’ve finally completed my latest digital painting.. a portrait of Hong Kong singer Charlene Choi (Twins) which I named “Chocolate Princess” :) I started this a week ago and spent about 25-30 hours on it total- pretty crazy huh? I based this image entirely off a reference image- so nope, I didn’t make her up. Maybe one day I’ll be good enough to paint without a reference (though that will be super tough!)

This artwork is my personal best so far so I hope you like it too!

Special thanks to Maki who gave me a crash course on how to blend colours yesterday (when the painting was almost done! haha). I was having a lot of trouble blending colours and it gave me an idea of how to tackle it (though I didn’t follow it exactly, I adapted it to my own style) You can compare the difference with the 2nd picture above with the one below.

Close up of the finished painting at 100% scale.

My favourite parts: Her eyes, her hair with the melting chocolate and the left side of her dress
Most difficult aspect: Her face (in particular her lips), painting/blending skin tone and colouring her dress

Final comments: The fur on her back was fun to paint (though very tiring since I drew every stroke)
I like how she looks in the end, except her face is slightly more chubby than I’d like (it looked thinner in previous revisions but in the end the lighting made her more round.. and I couldn’t fix it, haha)