Natalie Portman Portrait

I'm not dead yet

I know I've been gone almost forever now. It feels like centuries since I last posted a vexel. I miss making vexels so much. I've been so incredibly busy with college that I just haven't had the time to do the things I love in my spare time.

I did this vexel in between a major vector job I'm doing for New York University's Athletic Department and my massive amounts of homework. It was nice to have something to work on that was simply for fun, and not something I was being paid for, or something that was being demanded of me.

I went for a style that's a lot different than what people are used to seeing from me. I know a lot of people may hate this style (which is okay! ).

For one thing, I didn't care about keeping the skin layers organized. It's supposed to be messy, but not so messy that you end up not being able to identify the subject. For the most part the skin shading is freehanded, with a bunch of low opacities. There's some simple lineart here and there. Overall, it's a huge deviation from the norm for me. The hair is done with simulate pressure in Photoshop like I've always done, but the base was done entirely in Illustrator.

This piece is 90% illustrator and 10% photoshop (hair strands and title).

I'm going to finish up a few collabs I've agreed to do (that I've taken far too long to complete lol). Now that it's my summer vacation, I hope I can get those done very quickly

Thanks for reading and viewing.

Outline from Illustrator: [link]