Something not for kids maybe, but there's gotta be a change from time to time and maybe for those more lazy this will be a good motivation to get some anatomy practice done! ;) I hope you are not too deeply disappointed, maybe you will like this short ride through the drawing process of this image. Personally I am not to fond of the result and I hope t will turn out differently but it's always one more and practice makes you perfect, right?

This time I tried extra hard with the sketching, I wanted to focus on anatomy early on, before I lay out actual color. In that kind of drawing I'd rather spend 10 minutes more on the sketching and get the proportions right, just to avoid the fight with limbs too long, too short, or bending in wrong places. So yeah, when I'm done with the drawing, I place some first skin tones on the separate layer. I use very warm, pink colors and just block them out with a hard edged brush, to quickly get rid of the white. On the separate layers I then add base colors for her clothes and hair and erase all the places I've colored and shouldn't have.

Here you can see me changing my mind about the concept. I liked the original idea but decided to hide her face after all and change the color of the cap (somehow red cap on her hair and red jacket... too much red, had to tone it down a little bit). I also rotated everything a little bit, to make things less boring and bit more dynamic. The worst part was the background. I had so clue what to put in there. After some time I just drew some random trees on the horizon and, completely unhappy about it, started painting the girl. Next time I will think of the background before I start drawing anything, seriously...

Then I lower opacity of the sketch layer and start some serious painting. I use my texture brush for 99% of the time and of course you can download it, just click HERE.

Painting her skin was fun part for me. Face is already gone so this was actually the most interesting part :D I tried to experiment with colors a little bit, but mostly stick to pink and generally very warm tones. Lights are also warm, with a little bit of yellow instead of blue and shadows are very red, hot red. Only later I add some darker tones to put contrast a little bit higher and built the shape of the breasts but soon I realize, that I like delicate shadows more and I add more light and paint over darker areas.

At this point I sketched out her face once again, in color. Also started adding folds on her jacket. Down below you can see how I painted fabric, notice how I layered lights and shadows in those. At first I added main shadows, since they define shape of folds, then lighter colors, to bring central areas to the front and then some very bright lights in the color of the background. I wanted to give an impression of a bright, sunny day here, so I need to put some of that light on her clothes too. Then that sudden changes comes, I just used smudge tool and got rid of sudden transitions on the sleeve. I add up some small details, refine edges and that's about it.

When painting hair, I divide it into groups with a dark color first, then add many colorful strands, forming real detail. Colors help to make it less flat and boring, same with shadows that form groups. Strands near the outer edge are lighter because of additional light. I also fix her cap and face a little, using smudge tool and soft edged brush. Part of the hair gets a blur too, since detail was too visible and a huge distraction. I also finally smudge out ugly transitions on girl's neck and define bones there.

Finally time for her hand - at first I sketch it out once again, carefully, since after my sudden changes in the concept, this hand turned into a messy spot of pink color and nothing more. So after I am done drawing fingers, I add colors layer by layer, at first painting base shadows and them moving to lights and refining details. I fix color transitions with smudge tool, quickly finishing whole hand. Fingernails are painted very lightly - it's the same thing with teeth. You don't want to separate them too much, they start to look terrifying. Reddish fingers are something this particular character has so just ignore it ;) When her hand is ready I add more light to the whole picture using new layer in overlay mode and very soft brush.

Her jeans took surprisingly small amount of time. I use hard brush to quickly lay down some base shape and colors and then smudge tool to soften color transitions and fix lights and shadows so that everything looks nice and smooth. On the separate layer I then add some jeans texture - this is actually pretty easy to make. You just draw some dots on the new layer and use motion blur filter to create lines.

Finally I add details and fix some edges and here you have it, pants are ready, I just gave a bit more light to the lights and darkened shadows. On the middle picture you can see how I polished her skin. Only parts in shadows have some delicate texture from small dots. I didn't want it to be too prominent. After adding second hand (sorry, I don't have steps for that...) painting is more or less finished!

One last thing was a bit tricky - I transformed the whole thing, making the width of the picture smaller (she seemed too wide to me) and added a bit of contrast. Well, I hope you like the final effect :)