Doctor cu suflet și rațiune

The story

Patri found an inspiration picture online and used ChatGPT to make it hers, with her own words already in place: “doctor cu suflet și rațiune”, a doctor with soul and reason. That picture was the whole brief, and honestly, it's a lovely way to use AI: take something you love and personalise it. AI pictures aren't always realistic to paint, but this time it was the happy, useful kind. My part was turning AI into reality, 1:1, with my own two hands, and I think the real cap turned out even better than the reference: accurate, but real and cute, and very her.

The stethoscope is the part I'm proudest of. I spent ages on its shadows so it pops almost 3D instead of looking flat, and the tiny white dots all over the cap gave it so much life. I fussed over the leaves way too much, mixing Angelus Avocado and Olive until the green felt right, then giving them differently coloured edges and details. The flowers took so many shades of pink and darker burgundy before the palette matched. And the year got its own little custom touch at the bottom of the cap.

Process

1. 01Patri's reference: an inspiration picture she personalised with ChatGPT
2. 02Sketch on paper, transferred onto the cap with white graphite paper
3. 03White base layers, so the colours stay bright on black
4. 04Base colours: pinks, greens and gold
5. 05Shadows and highlights on the stethoscope
6. 06Flower and leaf details, tiny white dots
7. 07Touch-ups and sharper edges with black paint
8. 08Angelus flat finisher, in case it rained on the day

What I learned

• ✦Regular graphite transfer paper is basically invisible on a black cap, and going over it with white crayon didn't save it. White graphite paper was life-changing.
• ✦Black paint is my eraser: I used it to fix stray spots, sharpen blurry edges and even reshape letters. The two o's in “doctor” looked like cousins, not sisters, until I blacked parts of them out.

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