What Does Ellie Look Like In Illustrator?

This is my final project in Adobe Illustrator. I really had no idea what picture I wanted to use. I thought about using one of my own picture but I could not find one that I could honestly say I liked too much to change. So I went on Google imagines and find my favorite animal. An Elephant. I am not sure why they are my favorite but I love them. They are super adorable and really can defend themselves. But with this elephant I had not idea where to start. I ended up starting with the body. I drew the outline first but I wanted to make the elephant look like it had darker shadows. So I made the body, head, and ears all different colors. I then drew in lines so you could see the wrinkles of the elephant. I am extremely unsure about how to make this work. But figured lines were the best thing for the wrinkles. The back ground was my next challenge. I really wanted it to be blurred and kind of light looking but I was unsure of how to do this. As you saw from two posts ago, I originally just had the lines drawn out and the grass colored in and same with the sky. But then in class we learned a new way to make stuff blurred. So thats how I got the back ground to be slightly blurred and was able to make the colors different as I made the colors go up a little bit. The sky is also a blurred color. I actually really am proud of this work. I never thought I would be able to make something that looked like this. I am happy with the improvement that I made on each of the new pictures and how it progressed into something that is much better looking.