Farid

Aladdin remembered how he had loved his brother's laugh. It was gentle and always felt so nice on his ears.

It's supposed to be Farid from the fanfic Aladdin & the Heirs of Magic, by . ^_^ Poor little Farid. (I wanted to contrast the words and his future with having a happy looking picture).
When I really think about it, the question of whether or not Farid is truly dead is kind of a main thing in the fic. It doesn't seem like much, because there's all these big things happening, like Desdane coming back and gathering up an army, Mozenrath having some health issues after Desdane almost kills him, Mozenrath having to get along with not kill Aladdin and his friends to be able to get rid of Desdane, the truth about the gauntlet, Aladdin trying to get married, Cassim stealing the oracle... But, the fic starts with Aladdin thinking about Farid, and there's a thought here and there about him, and lately in the fic, there's been quite a lot about him. Might Farid still truly exist, or are some characters right in thinking he's gone forever, buried somewhere dark and unforgiving?

I tried something different with this picture. I worked out about the pose and everything in Photoshop, and then did the finished lineart and coloring with colored pencil. (though, then I messed with it in Photoshop: darkening it and adding light shining through the leaves (because I didn't want to mess it up if I got the light wrong), added a slightly yellow tint to the white part (because the yellowness of the paper didn't scan), and I drew the stuff in the book today in Photoshop.) You can see the picture without the Photoshop editing here: [link]

...I might've messed with the contrast too much. Does it look weird? Should I tone down the contrast/saturation a bit? Does the light spots look weird? I tried redrawing them on the tree based on some trees I'd seen recently (vs how I had first drawn them), but I'd found that it's a bit hard to do it the way I was thinking when the tree is segregated like that. :/ Does it look like everything's polka dotted or does it look like light shining?

Oh, by the way, the text on the picture, and in italics at the top of this comment, are quotes from the fic.

edit: I tried making the highlights better. Hopefully it looks better instead of worse. I got rid of the painted yellow spots and instead erased spots from the image and let a brighter version of the pic show through from behind. (I also tried making the stuff in the book match a little better, though I think it looks better at 100%, while this deviation was saved at 50%) Perhaps I should upload a close-up of the book sometime... Though, the English probably shouldn't be present in it. I also made up those two pages, so they're not from the fic.