This is a submission for the 5B spot on the Class Photo Collab. It uses CopheeMoth's Fading 16 palette.

Amidst my busiest months of the year for me, probably even of my life lol, I was suggested by Polt and Bleu that I should participate in the Class Photo Collab with them! I didn't really have the intention to do so in the beginning, at least not so early! But honestly, I was going to regret it a bit if I didn't, because it seemed fun to appear next to your friends. And since Polt was already abducting Bleu, thought it'd be funny to side-eye her.

Soooo here we are! XD This is third collab participation I thik! After all this experience (not that it's a lot, lol), I'm starting to feel like using a set palette isn't as hard as it felt some months ago! It's been fun deciding which of the available colors may be best to shade a particular area, instead of just creating new colors all the time.

I used a reference photo and took measurements on it to know how long different parts of my face needed to be. Before doing it, my face looked, well, kinda weird. XD Now I can confidently say I look quite similar to the person conveyed in the portrait!

Hoooowever, the measurements on the rest of the body weren't as precise... I have thickened my forearm like 4 times maybe —and it's still probably too thin!! Same with the hand. When I'm drawing it, it always feels enormous. When any other person, or even me from afar, looks at the drawing: it's always too small when compared to the face. I just need to practse more anatomy I guess, and get more comfortable with realistic proportions.

I'm particularly proud about the hair. It's not super detailed or anything, although I have received compliments about its texture! I've always found it kinda hard to draw hair in any medium, but this time I feel like the sense of the hair's straightness has been conveyed appropriately, so that's really cool!

What's even cooler is that, on one of the reference photos I was using, I saw some very dim blue tints on the hair. So I just went and painted some blue over the hair! May seem completely mundane to whomever is reading this, but hey, I'm still not really used to using colors in that way! Meaning you don't really think about the color blue when my hair is black or even brownish when hit by sunlight. So having seen those blue tints is quite amazing from my perspective.

The folds on the hoodie look okay. I like the one on the right side (the viewer's left). The ones on the left side have such a different vibe for some reason, and I don't feel they represent the real texture of the sleeves. The bigger folds on the center..., well, I kinda gave up on them, lol. I made some big shapes, which I'm not really sure make sense.

Anwyays, this is what my first WIP looked like: i.imgur.com/8ENk5nY.png

Yep: the hoodie was originally green! It's actually the hoodie I'm wearing while typing these words. And my face looks... human! Then what happened?

Well, just a crazy last-minute idea, actually. Since just side-eyeing Polt and pointing a gun at her was too boring, she suggested I should get my left side enshrouded (just discovered this word!). That's where the green infecting thingy coming from her hat originated. The hoodie then became red to add some variety to the piece, since it'd be too green otherwise. This way, I was also able to add some of the infection on my forearm, which is perfectly readable thanks to the fact that the infection and the hoodie are different colors.

Anyways, not much else to say. I had a good time. This took forever though, spent a lot of hours on it, so now I'm busier than before I signed up. Aaaand I'm sleeping very little tonight as well. Can't say I regret it though. I will regret it tomorrow.