This self-portrait assignment challenged us to create a self portrait in a style similar to a portrait we were inspired by.  My inspiration portrait was titled, "Plz Stay Home" by Amanda Fuson on Dribble. 

I was thinking about a Sunday afternoon on the couch with my dogs when I was creating this piece. The dogs have favorite spots on the couch, and if a lap is not available (because the computer is there), a pillow is the next best thing. One of my dogs has taken over the spot on the top of the cushion and has made a permanent indentation there. There is always a blanket on my lap, so I thought I would take that example right from the inspiration piece. The "window" is a cutout into our basement stairwell, so I attempted to show depth with a darker shade of the wall color. 

I used a combination of Adobe Illustrator for tablet with the stylus tool to draw the original sketch and to add the charcoal accents to the final image and the desktop version to create the rest. You can see my various color studies and alternate views in the additional images.

Draft sketch created with stylus on Adobe Illustrator for tablet

First color study version -similar to original version submitted for critique

Version 2 color study; version 1 left side artwork. Decided this was too busy; too many bright colors, artwork was distracting, hard to determine where the eye should focus.

Color study 3 with artwork attempt #2.  More muted and less busy, but still takes away from the dogs as a secondary focus of the image. Decided to scrap artwork/frames after this.

Last color study with more muted couch color before final was chosen. Last step after this was to recolor the couch back to marigold and upload to the tablet to add charcoal stroke with the stylus.