Me and Kaye are finally able to finish this newest Vector Dad theme. I still have oodles of portfolio items to upload, some tweaks still needs to be done here and there, plus a couple of free icon sets that’s been sitting in my hard drive are still waiting to be posted, but I think this site’s pretty much ready for public viewing.

Right now I’m concentrating on making premade graphics to put up for sale while I’m waiting for new client orders, and I hope to make more free icon sets so I can finally muster enough motivation to post them all here for your personal use.

Well, it’s pretty clean around here, don’t you think? I think Kaye’s love for the streamlined look is rubbing off on me.

This is my first attempt at colored vector illustration, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I still think I could do better though. I gave the family portrait project a rest, see if I can turn it into colored by first practicing on some other faces to vectorize instead. I chose Maggie Grace because for me, she’s one of the most beautiful faces in Hollywood.

What do you think of my first colored vector?

Think I should draw colored instead? It would be more work-intensive, but I know it will be more realistic. I’ll weigh my options, as I really want for this project to come out beautifully, not only for display, but also as a keepsake.

Anyway, I’m doing the heads of my MIL’s family. I’m relieved I haven’t heard nagging from Kaye to finish up the project, and MIL hasn’t mentioned it yet to me again since I showed her the other illustration I made last month.

I’m getting some jobs for custom characters from time to time, so I think it’s a great excuse, don’t you think? But I’m not about to push my luck, so here’s hoping I finish this project soon!

I am doing a portrait of all the members of my extended family right now, and I’ve started doing the illustration for Phoebe, Lloyd and Elijah. I am posting this here so I can show you my progress. There are twelve people to draw (including me, Kaye and Svet).

I hope to wrap this project up soon because my MIL is already excited to put it on a big picture frame once finished. I wonder how it looks like on paper. Hmmm…

I decided to make this illustration because as a basketball fanatic like me, I can picture Kayil (whose mom Pehpot’s is Kaye’s friend) as myself preparing for a jump shot when I was a kid. Pehpot wanted Kayil to blog so she asked me if I can create a custom illustration of him with a reference photo of her son making a shot.

The process was a quick one: using only Pen Tool and Mesh (thanks to my previous portrait of Maggie Grace, I learned the tricks) and Kayil’s high resolution photo, I was able to make a quick illustration of Kayil. I’m still figuring out the ropes of Adobe Illustrator so I can give the best of my services, and I still have a lot to learn. But I believe I can only get better with each drawing, so I’m crossing my fingers.

The result is something my MIL was pleased about: she in a chair with her laptop, and her three grandchildren (my daughter Svetlana and her cousins Hendrix and Elijah) playing around her. This is so much like what happens in real life when she’s here, with her grandchildren showing off in front of her whenever they get the chance.

I’m glad I did this project for her. We had a bit of a bad history back then, but I’m very glad she forgave me, and all that is behind us now. I am looking forward to seeing her whenever she has time to have a vacation here, and I’m just happy that we’re okay now.

Want to visit her blog? I’m sure you do! Kaye did something nifty with her navigation items (I honestly don’t have a clue how she does all that coding), and the result is something really simple yet striking. I took a screenshot of my MIL’s blog below, you can click on it to go to her site.

In one of Kaye’s efforts to bring people to visit my often dormant blog and expose me a bit to the blogging world, she asked me to make a custom character for the lucky winner of a contest that she was having in her blog, Beauty Queen Gene. It was an opportunity to practice drawing vectors more, so I agreed (and besides Kaye is not really someone I say no to). The winner turned out to be a school teacher from Davao, who Kaye calls Ate Vernz. We stalked Ate Vern’z Facebook page so I can have an idea of what she looks like.

This is the first time that I made a custom character for a blog header, so I was kind of apprehensive regarding the feedback. I am not so good with colors, but fortunately we had the help of Colourlovers.com for a good palette to use. Kaye let me read Ate Vernz’ thank you post for us, and I was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief when I learned that she loved our work.