This picture is unbelievably late.

Self Critique: The hand holding the piragua is pretty awful. While this was drawn before I rediscovered Posemaniacs’ Hands For Drawing, I really can’t stand how I drew it. Also, I think I may have drawn her bent leg wrong. Her straight leg looks off. The small ridges on the bottom of the cooler are crooked.

Sweet mother of god This took me pretty much the whole Summer to do! This pic was supposed to be for this year’s Puerto Rican Day, which was on June 14th this year. At first I was gonna put her near El Morro. When I looked up where it was, it was at a cliffside with no beaches in sight. The next best thing was to find other locations. After consulting some family members (who are Puerto Rican on my mother’s side), I chose Condado beach as the location, which is located in San Juan.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s start with the lady. Who is she? Well, she’s random, completely made from scratch. At first I was gonna do a sort of sequel to a Puerto Rico pic I did many years ago involving the Super Mario cast. However I opted to do this random lady. While I did worry that her bikini would resemble the usual American flag bikini, I figured the chair she’s on would at least hint at where and who she is. While piraguas are usually served in cups here in New York, I’m told that they serve them in cones in Puerto Rico.

Next is Finne. Last time, Yoshi was drinking coconut milk from a coconut, a common refreshment in Puerto Rico. This time around, Finne taking on that roll, downing it like crazy. Next is the cooler and its contents. This one took some time. Again I consulted family members on some common Puerto Rican beers. Getting flooded with info, I resorted to putting the beers I’m used to seeing some family members drink, Heineken (blegh) and Corona Extra (only good with Coca-cola). I pulled off some tricks to make the ice the way it is. There is one thing that was kinda funny. That cooler is actually flipped horizontally. It was facing the other way. I messed up when I realized very late that I shaded in the cooler the wrong way. Not willing to fix it, I simply flipped it. Either way, now it looks right and accessible for the lady to pic up a drink from where she’s sitting.

Now for the background. When I began the process of drawing it, I came close to wanting to trace the buildings because of how active they were, however I didn’t want to have this be a crutch when stuff gets complicated. So I only got as far as tracing the general shape of the buildings. The smaller details I did with the reference pic close, counting, drawing, and deleting lines where necessary. The building on the left was the most complex with many overlapping layers. There was no winging details with this one. Kinda looked like a Mirror’s Edge building when I finished it. Next was the middle building. Since it was further away, it was less detailed. Pretty easy. Then came the building on the right. But at this point I was getting exhausted and there were two red buildings. Once I finished one building’s details, I just copied it, resized it, and applied it to the other. Finally there was the structure in front of the 1st building. Same thing like the 1st building, only traced the general shape of it, went freehand with reference for the rest. Palm trees I put less detail on since they were further away. I then put a blue filter on top, fix a few things here and there, and that’s it, pic done.

Done on GIMP 2.8. Intuos4 Tablet used.
Random lady and Finne are (c) DeadPhoenX.