The image was nearly complete at this stage; the next and final stage was the background (Fig.53).

Part 3: Illustrating the Background

Instead of creating a blue night-time sky, I turned it into hues of grey for a mystical effect.  Here I set the colour palette of the background (Fig.54). I used a gradient mesh on the sky with a black zenith, blue horizon and a grey ground fog. I added a grassy ground using the Wrinkle tool from the tool bar. The effects of the distortion are shown in (Fig.55). I then added a black-to-white gradient, and set the Transparency to "Soft Light” and the opacity to 50% (Fig.56).




The clouds were a little tricky; I wanted it to have the same colour as for the background, so I colour-picked the background colour and applied the gradient mesh using my preset cloud colour palette (Fig.57). Here is the result of the blending of subtle clouds on to the sky (Fig.58).



To create the stars, I made a white circle object and then on the tool bar I chose Effect > Stylize > Outer Glow. With the Outer Glow option, I chose "Screen” mode. After the shape was set I dragged it to the Symbol window and renamed it to "stars” (Fig.59).


On the tool bar I chose Symbol Spray (shortcut "S”). I sprayed it randomly on the zenith sky. I made the stars in random sizes by clicking and holding the Symbol Spray button down; this will bring up a few more options – from which I chose Symbol Sizer Tool. Selecting the stars and spraying with Symbol Sizer Tool made the stars much bigger; holding down the Alt key would make them smaller (Fig.60).



Here is the final starry sky, created using the Symbol Spray. And with this, the illustration is complete!
Here is the final illustration of "Jamukha, Got Milk?” (Fig.61).


Thank you very much everyone for reading this article; I hope you have picked up some tips and techniques in using Adobe Illustrator from all this. For more digital painting tutorials please visit my website.