Portrait of Cassie

I had family over at my place for a BBQ get together last night. My brother has four children. And they are all little bundles of energy. It is often a struggle to keep them all entertained when they are visiting. But sometimes what gets them to calm down is watching me draw. So I whipped out my Tablet PC and fired up Painter and started drawing letting them do some of the art direction. We started out with a dragon, then did this portrait, and later did Goku riding a unicorn.

This is a portrait of my neice Cassie in my anime-ish style. She likes Naruto so I put that little Naruto plate on her head. I also gave her some cool sandals that anime characters sometimes wear. I'm not too used to drawing characatures or portraits on the spot but I think this one came out very well. What's funny is I originally drew her mouth like I normally do mouths where they are closed but drawn with a broken line like on this one. But Cassie didn't like that mouth. She thought it was ugly. So I changed it to an open smiling mouth and then she was pleased. It's really funny how kids so freely express their opinions. Cassie is the eldest of the four. I think she's 8 or 9 years old now.

If you've done on the spot portraits or characatures before and have any tips, I'd love to hear them.