A portrait of my daughter Rachel done entirely with Adobe Illustrator with primarily the gradient mesh tool.

This illustration was for a tutorial I wrote for the new Adobe Illustrator Techniques newsletter. If you subscribe, you even get to download my original illustrator file so you can check it out first hand!

Head on over to [link] to see the site, checkout the newsletter, gallery, forums, and online tutorials.

This illustration is posted here with permission from Adobe Illustrator Techniques newsletter.

Update: Here is some illustrator info for those that are interested:

Document:

Name: Realistic Illustrator Portrait.ai

Color Mode: RGB color
Color Profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Ruler Units: pixels
Artboard Dimensions: 288 px x 432 px
Show Images in Outline Mode: OFF
Highlight Substituted Fonts: OFF
Highlight Substituted Glyphs: OFF
Preserve Text Editability
Simulate Colored Paper: OFF

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Objects:

Paths: 299 (0 open, 299 closed, 1356 points, length = 89502.711 px)
Compound Paths: 1
Gradient Meshes: 29
Blends: 6
Transparent Groups: 17
Transparent Objects: 265
RGB Objects: 42

Gradient Objects:
Unnamed gradient 1 (linear) (RGB)
Unnamed gradient 10 (linear) (RGB)
Unnamed gradient 11 (linear) (RGB)
Unnamed gradient 8 (linear) (RGB)
Unnamed gradient 9 (linear) (RGB)

If I calculated this correctly that means if this illustration were one long path, it would be 103.5 feet long! hehe