cartoon process - Misato and the golden retriever

Recently I've been drawing a few golden retrievers, and so this photo of weather presenter Misato Nagano and dog caught my eye.

woman and golden retriever

I wasn't quite sure about a gag at his point, or what the finished picture might even look like, but thought I'd press on regardless and see what happened.

womand and dog sketch

 

Here is a tracing of the photo.

woman and dog umbrella

 

I then decided to make them a bit more cartoony. I'm still not sure what the setting for the cartoon is going to be at this point.

woman and dog rainy day

As she is a weather presenter I got the idea that she was kneeling down under an umbrella, with the dog huddled beside her. This triggered the idea of a particularly ominous rain cloud looming into view. I decided to set the cartoon with them overlooking a valley.

golden retriever and woman

 

I'm now adding colour to the characters using a watercolour brush. I thought I'd put her in orange and brown to coordinate with the Golden Retriever, and to make them both stand out from the green in the background.

woman and dog scene

At this point I'm not quite sure whether the perspective works or no. The idea was that they were on the top of a hill overlooking a valley, but I didn't think I'd managed to convey the idea of a hill well enough, so I thought about adding a fence to show the edge.

woman and golden retriever

I tried the fence idea but it didn't quite work, so instead I decided to add a darker tone to the valley to help aid the perspective.

I hope you enjoyed following the process of how I createed this particular cartoon. If you'd like me to create an original cartoon for you, then drop me a mail using the form below. Thanks.