Hot Summer's Day (Patreon)

I had a few ideas for how to do this one, but I definitely knew that I wanted it to feel hot and summery. To do that, colors were hugely important to me. Before I even nailed the composition, I started planning how I wanted to incorporate the dominate theme -- orange -- into the drawing.

The first sketch I started with had the male being drawn in close to the woman. He hovered over her, excited and waiting. I still like the sketch a lot, but I was starting to get some déjà vu. The pose was too similar to this other drawing I'd done awhile back, and I wanted to try something a little different.

Next came the colors. I chose a deep, saturated yellow as the base, and all the other color decisions were made from there.

Once I had the flats down, it was a matter of adding in some shading and playing with the background.

I really like how the blue background worked with the orange in the drawing. I also tried a different brush setting in my drawing program to get those loose, visible strokes of light and shadow across the skin.

And there you have it! On that note, hope you all are staying nice and cool during these warm summer months. This will be the last illustration set before I return in October, but feel free to submit sketch requests in the meantime.

All the best,

Y.