I thought I would share a couple process photos for an illustration I just finished. This illustration was a personal project. I chose items from my son's room that I felt best represented him at this moment in time, and made an illustrated snapshot.
First I laid out a collection of my son's goodies and took a photo with my phone. Nothing fancy.
Then I drew the images in Illustrator, and started coloring them in. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the type yet, so I just slapped in a placeholder. I was also still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the background. At first I thought I might want it to have a paper texture. The one laid in here is linen.
For the final version I chose to go with a clean light blue background, and to do some decorative hand lettering—in a style to match the way I chose to draw the items.