Eli reached out to me about creating a custom illustration as an anniversary gift and since their anniversary happens to be on Halloween he wanted them to be in costume. Also, I had to find a way include their adorable pooch!

This custom illustration was created on Procreate on an iPad with an Apple Pencil. I used the dry ink brush to illustrate the lovebirds and the dog, and I used various paint brushes to create the background.

I loved doing this spooky, special family portrait illustration. Join me in wishing the couple a very happy anniversary and many more years of love together!

Custom illustrations make terrific gifts for all occasions! If you are interested in ordering a custom illustration, shoot me a message!

When I was in my early twenties, I lived in Los Angeles and was working as a background actor in movies and TV shows. On one of those sets is where I first heard my friend Anthony casually and with great authority break down the various zodiac signs and guess with great accuracy our signs. I was fascinated. I didn't "believe" any of it, but I enjoyed it with a speculative interest. Over the years, I pretty much stayed in that state of quiet curiosity, checking my horoscope periodically for a laugh.

Then, a few years ago, I started checking the romantic compatibility between signs for people I dated, and people who friends were dating and I started to notice a lot of accuracy. My girlfriend and I are Cancer and Taurus respectively and everything I've read about the match between these two signs is exactly, for us, right on. We are extremely compatible. A great match. And my previous relationships (before I was checking astrology compatibility) ended up ending due to exactly the kinds of issues astrology says those two signs matched up would have. It's crazy! And hey, I still take it all with a large grain of salt, and I'm not going to make any decisions based solely off astrology, but I do enjoy it as a fun lens to look at things through and a perspective to consider.

I've been wanting to do a zodiac sign illustration series for a while now. To create these, I pulled up information about each sign and then took a couple different aspects of each description and sourced some images to put together to create my scene and then illustrated it. I use ProCreate to illustrate and I love all the different layers you can use and the variety of brushes available. Then, I used the Template app to add the border and text.

I held a custom illustration giveaway contest on social media (if you aren't following me on Instagram & Facebook--get on that!) Mandy won and she asked for an illustration of her brother and her as kids in a field of daisies--because daisies are her Mom's favorite flowers and a "field of daisies" is her Mom's happy place. She wanted to gift her Mother with the illustration for her birthday. 

I loved this idea. I planned on working on this project today and tomorrow, but a bout of insomnia had me crack it out last night (less than a day turnaround time!). I used the photo she sent and found some reference photos for the field of daisies. Next, I put the images together in Procreate on my iPad and got the proportions how I wanted. Then, I started drawing. I love how it turned out! And hopefully Mandy's Mom does too! *fingers crossed*

If you are interested in ordering a custom illustration, shoot me an email at DesigningIndie (at) gmail (dot) com