People reading in context

One person in my inner circle actually paid attention when I asked for reference photos in which they were reading a book from within a scene. Although I enjoy painting the close-up portraits of people and their books, I mostly want to paint pix of people in context of their daily life. Heidi sent me a good one, because it was also outdoors on her patio, which is not the usual for reading nooks.

My biggest regret with this one is that I didn't stop and think to do it on watercolor paper. I did it in my sketchbook, but because I'm including the entire scene, everything was fairly small, and it was hard to get good detail work on the sketchbook paper surface. I may end up doing this one again sometime. I entirely overworked some parts, while others are lacking subtlety because of the inability to shadow as well on this thinner paper.

I hope it's recognizably Heidi, even though it's small and hard to define features at that size. I did a little editing of the scene, including changing the fence and leaving out some objects for simplicity's sake. I also had to slightly redesign both the cover and the type content on the book—I always underestimate the amount of room needed to write things and have to simplify!

Pencil, micron pen (on book), watercolors, in Bee sketchbook.