"One Last Trick"

The illustrated piece below is an attempt to depict -- with irony, dark humor, and poignance -- the suicide of a stereotypically troubled teen. Scattered around the room are clues at his life. As he ends his own life and leaves behind his friends and family, he performs his final skateboard trick, perfectly.

Process

Below is a timelapse of the process I used to create this illustration from start to finish, accompanied by a short description along each step of the way.

I first did a quick layout sketch on graph paper

I then imported the sketch into Photoshop, began tracing, and split the piece into squares (for Instagram)

I finished the tracing, altered the boy's body, and removed the sketch layer

I added a base color -- pink, to give it a young and sentimental feel. This color informed the rest of the color palette moving forward

I began lightly filling in the shapes with colors.

Continued coloring...

I finished coloring in the shapes and added a gradient to the pink wall background to make it a bit less flat

The final touches -- I added some overlay gradients to play with the mood and added some graph paper texture back in (as a reference to the first sketch, and also to enhance that young/teenage feel)

Closing Note

I hope it was enjoyable to take a look into this process, and I look forward to posting more content on Steemit! Feel free to follow more of my works on my instagram and my website.

Best,
Teddy