Knowing Lydia a bit before Ting Lin and John Author, but I had a harder time drawing her. Because I rarely see her at the voice-over recording sessions unlike John and Ting who were always there. Also she likes to hide behind her huge pitch black or reflective sunglasses or looked away if there's a photo of her at all. Luckily with Ting's help, finally I got a close-up picture of her face facing the camera and her eyes also looking into the camera. I based her facial features on that photo, but her holding a wine glass pose was based from another photo but looking away at the wine bottle. I took cues from her instagram photos that this Lydia lady is a wine addict so I had to draw that in added with her sassy attitude and her sassy hair. After the pencil outline, the style formed and I felt this one should be left with simple black outline to fit the sassy attitude, so I did. And I added the hair coloring afterwards for balance so it's more dynamic on the top area and focus on her face and not bottom heavy with elbow and her left hand touching the bottom and side edges.
Knowing Ting and John Arthur at the same time, but drawing Ting was not a complete smooth because I had one complete erase after the whole face's pencil line's almost done. I blamed coffee. I had one right before I sat down and it just carried me all the way to the end, my hand literally couldn't even stop and look from afar to see if it looks right. And I thought I was on fire and just gotten so good at it now. Um no. I didn't know Ting has her Ting's Test Kitchen business until I checked her Facebook for this drawing, and that's just perfect theme for her. And it was awesome there's another photo of her holding a cupcake at her work desk, so I combined her Test Kitchen biz headshot with her cupcake holding picture. And since there's no photo of her with her legs, I thought just to give her an apron and make it more focus on her and her business presented on her hands. For Ting's drawing, I tried to do it different from John's, so I took cues from her biz headshot and used strong block colors with Sharpies, but I made a mistake of testing the color with just little doodling, so her face and body's orange color is just a bit too strong when finished, she literally looked like an orange. So to rescue it, I used white color pencil to shade it lighter, and I ended up cutting her off of the white cardstock and pasted it on a roll of brown wrapping paper that happened to make all her colors pop compared to other color cardstocks I have, and pasted it again on white cardboard for thickness support. This mistake I love.
John's drawing also came smoothly on the first time I tried without erase, I guess since I've known John for quite some years now, so his character's been working in my head. Going through John's Facebook photos and saw a close up selfie of him with a bit of neck and shoulder showing with no clothes on in the middle of nowhere kind of calm water with a far far away island, that reminded me of the TV show 'The Last Man On Earth' that I liked, it gave me the spark and the drawing began. And the boat's from another photo of his from other travel destination, so it was perfect for me to combine since the selfie photo didn't capture anything below his shoulder, and the very tanned orange is also from another photo of his probably taken in his office, either he drew himself on it or his colleague drew it, also another perfect fit for this The Last Man On Earth theme that I wanted. John also has two different photos holding white coffee mug with different hands, so I was sure that's what he would want to do in this "Last Author On Earth" situation.
