Vector Portrait

I chose to vector a baby picture of myself to represent Innocence. While creating the vector i made sure to add enough detail to make it look like the picture, yet at the same time i focused on making it look very animated by not adding the same colors as the original picture and not make the details so exact. For example, the flowers are made very bubbly and distorted to give the picture the animated look. The grass detail is very simple and only added to give it the slight impression of grass and still make it look cartoonish. Through out the process i played with the gradient mesh tool to give light in certain areas of the portrait and worked with the transparency tool to lighten certain objects where the colors were too bright. I worked a lot with the pencil tool, for example, i used it with the details in the hair, the flowers and the grass. In the end i blurred the background to make the baby stand out and give it some seperation from the background which was obviously further away.