Mother’s Day Gift

I drew this as a gift for Mother’s Day. Since we didn’t want to mail anything and a lot of the local businesses where our mom lives are closed, my sister came up with this idea.

The story is that our Mom ran the Honolulu marathon in 1982, but she didn’t purchase her race photos because she was sure she would run another marathon and get a better time. But life happens, and she still hasn’t run another marathon, so she really wishes she had gotten those photos.

So my sister dug up her bib number and race time and we put this package together for her. Once everything opens up again, we’ll also get it framed for her.

I used a picture of my mom and her sisters (and brother-in-law) as well as a photo from the actual marathon to put the picture together.

One thing I learned, was how much my mom and I look alike!

It was really hard to draw this because I’m really not confident in my digital art yet. I never would have done this except that I knew it would be appreciated by mom. A painting only a mother could love…

But once I did it I was really happy. A few things were rushed to meet the Mother’s Day deadline, but for the most part I like it. Getting back into drawing has been really hard because I keep thinking, “I used to be better than this” and get frustrated. But for once I think this is finally as good as anything I ever did in high-school!

It’s still really hard not to be self-deprecating though.

Initial sketching, without worrying about likeness

Flat colors

Starting to block in the background

I was mostly there on the face but had a lot left to do

Refined the linework and got some of the likeness

This was mostly there and I was also out of time!

I was ten minutes late to our Mother’s Day Zoom call because I was frantically putting the “framed” photo together.