The client sent me two separate photographs - one of him, and the other of his wife when they were first dating. This fast sketch is how I planned to layout the artwork - I sent it to the client to give him an idea of what I envisioned.
Below, you can see the final result:
As you can see from the first sketch, I had planned to move her eye direction, but in the end, I decided to move the direction of his eyes so they would be looking in the same direction.
One of the challenges when working from two separate photographs is the lighting. The lighting will be different, so allowances and changes need to be made. Reflections in the eyes should be on the same side of the eye (usually). I first noticed the need to do that when I was in a frame shop in Snellville when I first started drawing portraits for people. The portrait was in pastel and it was gorgeous but I was immediately aware that it was drawn from separate photographs because the reflections in the eyes were on opposite sides, and the shadows in the portrait didn't make sense. They can't be together in a portrait and have the dark sides on opposite sides. Once I noticed it, it really bothered me a lot - kind of ruined the initial impression I had of the portrait being beautiful. I made a mental note to always remember that, and I think just seeing that one portrait eally helped my art skills from that point.
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