Date: 8 August 2025

During this pandemonium of a piece, I was finally able to understand why on earth my computer was constantly losing gbs of memory................ to the point I was like: what on earth is wrong with you, please don't tell me I'll need to replace you soon........ you're too young to die.... (like maybe nowadays 5 years is a lot for a computer but come on!!!)

Anyways, sketching sketching----

^lil close-up of the flowers. Tbh, they don't make much sense, I was mostly trying to figure out how to draw them 'cause hydrangeas are complex... also I distressed the lines a little with a crosshatching kind of brush, set to eraser mode.

By the way, these are the references I used for the hydrangeas: 
https://www.pexels.com/photo/vibrant-hydrangea-blossoms-in-full-bloom-33019193/
https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-hydrangea-flowers-17379963/

trying to figure out Phoenix's legs.... 

Now... I took a break and came back to line Growlithe. Can you see what's wrong here?? It actually took a while for me to notice..... Like I was doing the lines and I happened to look at Miles' knee and I was like. Something is wrong here.

Yeah. The lineart is gone. That's the sketch underneath...
Why you ask???
WELL
I thought I saved. It apparently didn't. Althought I'M SURE I pressed save. I thought... well, I guess that's lack of concetration due to fibro fog or something. WELL IT WASN'T
A few days later, I go to save, and lo and behold... my pc tells me it can't save because it doesn't have enough memory left.
I go to see what's up, and there's like, 200mb of memory left??? Even though I didn't download anything?

I'll save you the whole ordeal, but utimately I found out the reason was that my avast browser (yes that's what I used) occupied like MORE THAN 100GB OF MEMORY. IN LOGS.
What did I do? Disinstalled it and proceeded using chrome. Why did I even have avast? I dunno, I had downloaded the antivirus and since it was suggested....... look, I'm not good at computers. I do whatever. No looking at reviews and advice or whatever. And this is what happens. 

Now I have 117gb of free memory. My pc can finally breathe.

Anyway. End of foolish story. Let's move on....

Fortunately, I had screenshooted the linework (the one you saw before) so I opened it and traced it again...... of course, it's not the same, but did my best ^^''''

^ I tried to give Growlithe some Missile features, like the curl in his tail and a bit of tinier paws. Also more fluff. And smaller ears.

Made a correction layer gradient map here, with a layer underneath in grayscale.

^this is what it looks like with the gradient map hidden (and without the block of color of the characters). It's not like, a true grayscale thing. I am not even looking at this as I paint anyway, since I have the gradient map active from the beginning.

^this is the mess it looks like up close haha- this is meant to be a base of color, not the final render so.

Below, you can see layer by layer how I overlap different colors on top of each other (I'm going to change this a lot later >_>)

Here I hide the leaves layer so that I can work on the hydrangeas more easily. I merged everything in the background together, and fixed the misshaps from the earlier (the messy bits).

Now since I was a bit confused with how to proceed with the background, I went and colored the characters. 

details:

^laid down a base pink

^a bit of purple on top of the pink on another layer

^Goomy, Ralts, and Rowlet all have some green on them, but they're different greens. I made them similar because the more colors you add, the messier a picture feels. At least to me. So I prefer to use a limited color palette. Also, the greens I used are more similar to shiny Rowlet's, who has a green with a bluish undertone to it. A cool green. Ralts and Goomy have a warmer green (so more on the yellow side), which doesn't fit here, since the colors of the background are on the blue/pink side, and in real life the colors of the background influence the colors of the characters and objects. Basically, a warm green like Ralts' and Goomy's would feel out of place.
Not only that, but since the green bits would be 'the odd ones out' the eye would focus too much on them, which isn't the goal. I want the eye to look at the whole scene little by little, and not to focus on those three in particular. Of course, there is one main focus point here, which is Miles and Growlithe. Those, in theory, should be the first ones your eyes notice. But then the eye should quickly move to the other characters and perceive the whole scene. At least, that was my intention.

^shadows in blue

^clipped a layer to the shadows to add some pink in them

^fixed the leaves a bit

^I like to distress lines and add some texture.... 

So I tried to print this, and it looked too dark. So I adjusted the saturation and hue a little.

Also I hid the characters' layers on accident and this is what it looks like underneath LOL

it looks kinda cool, not gonna lie...

Anyway, this is the final! 

Actually some days ago I fixed the seam in front of Miles' shirt because I forgot to draw it... I mean you probably barely notice the difference, but I'm pedantic.

Uh. Also, this just came to mind, but... why doesn't Miles' shirt have buttons, anyway? How does the thing button up??? Like, don't tell me.... those seams are fake...? Does it close in some other way? Don't tell me little Miles can't button up his shirt because of his clumsiness (origami...) and so Gregory got him some baby version of a button-up shirt....... Do those even exist? I'm crying...