Hermione and Crookshanks

Phew.

So this is my Hermione Crookshanks drawing done in the same style as The HP Trio...And like the HP trio (I'm sorry to say this, but...) the outlines were traced from a picture. It's just...I'm still learning ok? It turned out quite nice, I'm rather pleased with the hair, sweater, skirt, table and the drawer handles! I couldn't believe how realistic they looked when I zoomed out!

Here's the original photo: [link] I think it's from a calendar or something. I made Crookshanks a bit more orange 'cause it looked better, and put more contrast in Hermy's hair. (It looks a bit blond, though.) And changed the sweater colour just a little bit. At first I didn't decide to do the background, all those thingamajigs on the table, but then I drew them anyway. They probably took the longest since I had no idea what they were, it just seemed like upside-down measuring cylinders with stuff in it.

The thing I don't like about this is; hmmm, well, the background and accessories kinda look better than Hermione or Crookshanks, which is supposed to be the main attraction. I especially like the egg-thing on the right. My brother said Hermione looked like a doll. It's the airbrushed-plasticy-look thing...(Eventhough I didn't use an airbrush.)

I've decided to go into some details:

Done in: Adobe Photoshop CS.
Tools used: Pencil (outlines), Brush (colouring and shading), Blur tool, dodge and burn tool (occasionally), eyedropper, normal selection tools...
Layers: 27
Filters: Add Noise (sweater and skirt), Texturizer - Canvas (skirt), Sandstone (part of the table - I wish I didn't, though)
Patterns: A wood grain pattern (top and sides of table), another pattern for the walls
Time taken: A long, long, long time.

Comments pleez!

5 August 2004 Update: I touched up Hermy's hair, face, sweater and hands a bit. You can see the changes here: [link] (it's in .swf format 'cause a .gif file made it too lossy)