Riji Dij - Original Digital

Girl & her puppy - history

i was walking home from the shops when a tiny puppy came zooming out to me, so tiny it fit through the bars of the gate with ease. it was one of those puppies that's too hyperdrived and clueless (a hundred jumps, nips and licks per minute type) to have any road sense. i figured i should keep the critter occupied until the owner came out. then a gorgeous little girl - its owner and about 4 years old - came out and talked to me for a bit and the puppy started doing the jump and lick thing with her and ... that's the picture. a sort of cartoon cubist polaroid :-) ... or julp to the final image.

Stage 1: The original drawing

First step was to put my vision on paper and scan it.

Stage 2: Creating a vector version of the drawing

Then I traced over the scanned drawing in a vector imaging program, making minor improvements along the way (note that the puppy's paw is now touching her arm).

Creating a vector version gave me the option of making the image any size I liked without loss of quality (within the limitations of my system, anyway).

Stage 3: Adding extra elements

Again, using the vector imaging program I drew up a stylised tree and fence for the image background.

Stage 4: Putting it together

Then I put together the various elements, coloured them, and drew the window and face (artistic license since the girl's father was actually outside).

I applied various filters and textures to portions of the image for effect.

Stage 5: Final touch-ups

Finally, I touched up the image, working the colours (since most people aren't always keen to have vivid green tones on their walls - at least not since the 70s) and added extra background detail plus various tweaks.

I originally tried to make this image a full A3 size at 300dpi but every edit I made to the 30mb file took too long to process on my year 2000 system. I need to buy a new computer that's capable of handling very large files and then recreate this image from stage 4 onwards to wind up with a good-sized printed artwork.