iris in the clouds process writeup

(originally posted to Patreon on Jul 11 2021)

waaaggghhh, sorry for the delayed post. i was out of town for a week, and i was really busy for a while there!

i had been wanting to do a proper, finished drawing of Iris for ages now - but honestly, i always get super indecisive when i draw her. the thing about Iris is that i always imagine her to be really experimental with her fashion choices, and... that's simultaneously very exciting and almost a little overwhelming. like, how do i narrow down options for her?? she would look cute in so many different things.

and then as usual, in the middle of the night, i finally come up with ideas and scrawl them out in MS Paint with a mouse.

no, really.

i mean, i ended up changing the pose in the end after looking around at references, but that's still the gist of the drawing, lmao. i actually popped open a book that i've had lying around for a while, but haven't used much... even though i really should! it's called Super Pose Book Vol. 1, and it's basically just a big book of nude figure drawing references.

i was looking for a good sitting pose that still had some playfulness to it, and i liked the way she was leaning. pretty good starting point!

i also ended up settling on this lingerie set from cantiqLA, the ruff cut bralette & panties:

(side note, that brand is one of the few i've seen that actually offers underwear options with more crotch room, and not just in masculine-leaning styles.)

i had a pretty clear idea of what i wanted to go for, color scheme-wise. i mean, i can't not go for cute pastel purples.

to be honest, i've been wanting to change how i draw Iris's hair for a while, just to make her look more distinct from Rosie and Diana. those two both have long wavy hair, so i thought something more straight and flowy would be nice. i like how her bangs came out, too!

also, i did do more last-minute adjustments on this piece.

left: before, right: after. mostly i just put in some overlay and multiply layers to push the contrast a bit more. it's a really subtle difference, but i think it makes it look nicer. it's kind of similar to how you'd use dodge and burn techniques in photography, i guess...? i took a lot of photography classes in college. i feel like i learned more useful techniques there than i did in my actual digital media classes. lmao.

all in all, i had a lot of fun working on her, even if progress was kind of slow. i was in the middle of adjusting to using a new tablet (!!!) and a new glasses prescription, which was an extremely slow adjustment. god i hate being migraine and dizziness prone. it's really difficult dealing with that when everything you work with is visual-based... @_@

i want to draw Iris more in the future, because she is lovely and i love drawing her 💜