I used the shape of the head from Stage 3 as the basis of this image, I constructed the hair in the same was I made the hair for Stage 3. I then erased the mouth and used a 1px eraser of 100% hardness to remove the darkness around the eyes as this illustration was going to show a much more happier character...


Drawing the mouth was one of the most difficult aspects of this image as the feeling I was trying to convey was one of happiness still with the exposure of the emotions and vulnerablilty of the previous stages. To do this I used the same settings as previous along with previous smudge and blur settings...


To finalize the idea of the emotionally and mentally repaired man I added a stitched effect around the mouth trying to aesthetically interpret the connotation as well as adding finishing finer details to improve upon the technical aspects of the image...