My birthday is coming up this Monday, so—as is my tradition—I set out to create the illustration I make to celebrate the day. I’ll leave a collage of all the ones I’ve done so far at the end so you can comment and tell me which one you like best and whether you think I’ve improved. Anyway, I wanted to do something quick and simple this time due to time constraints, so I used photos taken at my nephew’s first-grade graduation—where I actually look decent—as a reference. After doing a quick sketch of the pose I wanted, I started on the clean line art. For my two dogs, I referenced previous drawings I’d done of them to avoid getting bogged down in the shapes and details; I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

By this stage, I had already changed the background color to gray to better appreciate the tones; next, I refined the lines of my character and then used the circle tool to create the pupils. After that, I applied the base colors to everything and began adding details—such as the spots and specific markings of my dogs—along with the corresponding shadows.

Next, I proceeded to add detail to my character—specifically the appropriate highlights and shadows. I added some blue highlights here because I had already planned to make the background that color; however, I have a bad habit of not doing the background first—or at least blocking in the base colors—which would have helped me better manage the interplay of light and shadow. At one point, I forgot to save part of the process—especially when working on the skin and other details—because the power was flickering and I was afraid of a blackout, so I was rushing to get everything done as quickly as possible.

After painting the characters, I exported them as a PNG to create the background in a separate document; I started with a blue rectangle followed by smaller rectangles in various shades of green and blue, though I immediately removed them because I didn't like the look. I initially preferred repeating the text "Happy Birthday" in the Atlas typeface, but seeing just the blue background didn't convince me, so I did end up adding the rectangles—but only in shades of green.

I added a subtle black shadow to the lettering to lift it slightly from the background and add depth; then, I pasted in my character and applied a white outline and a soft black shadow to give it a sticker-like finish. In addition to that, I added stars and other details across various parts of the composition.

To wrap things up, I added a texture layer, set it to overlay, and lowered the opacity to 62%. To ensure everything shared the same color tone, I added a blue gradient layer; I faced a bit of a dilemma there, though, because I liked the result when I set it to "Lighten" at 64% opacity, but I also liked it set to "Overlay" at 32% opacity—so, in the end, I chose both.