Tennis Family

This is another illustration for the Dreamstime contest.  I originally did the basketball dad and son for the same contest, but decided against it because of how well I thought it turned out.  This one also turned out better than I originally expected (I was working with a style of character that was very stylized and that I hadn't done before).

I originally drew it without the girl in front - but I think she adds so much more dimension to the piece.  There's a lot of green in this picture, but I think it helps 'pop' the characters...and also, from the courts I've played on, the color scheme is very similar.  I drew each character separately in my sketchbook, and then cleaned them up in Adobe Illustrator and placed them on a tennis court I drew way back in 2006 (for a children's book that never went anywhere)...and I colored the entire thing in Adobe Illustrator (well, I did a first pass at color, then my wife took a pass, and then I finished it off by adding gradients).

And for those of you who don't know - Dreamstime is one of the big microstock sites - they hold a monthly contest where the top three prizes are hundreds in cash.  The contest is open to site uploaders (whether it be illustrations or photographs) with at least 50 images in their portfolio.  And even if your image doesn't win, it is still bumped up to a higher selling bracket...