Annie Get Your Gun sketch

Making some progress on the next fake theater poster.

DONE, for the most part

Here's the painting scanned and pretty much done. I think I'll play around with the colors a little in Photoshop, but I'm pretty happy with it as is. Oh, and I might add a splat of blood on the tongue, didn't have the courage to do that with real paint since it would have been a pain to take it out.

 Feed Me, 13"x19"

watercolor and acrylic on cold press Arches 140lb

Switching to acrylic mode

I started working in acrylic this morning and am pleased with how it behaves over the watercolor. It's a great feeling when you discover a method that "clicks". I've been painting transparently for so long that a quick jump into the land of opaque paint just wasn't working for me.

more progress...

Starting with watercolor and will move into acrylic once the paper stops taking the paint as well.

Little Shop of Horrors drawing

I just finished the drawing for my next theater themed poster. I'm really excited about how this one is shaping up and I can't wait to start slapping down THIN layers of paint.

Oh, my friend Tyler was kind enough to pose for a headshot on this piece since everything I do looks suspiciously like me (aka "model numero uno").

Gotta call it done

I need to send this off because it's driving me crazy. I learned a TON doing this piece, I'm not fully happy but I'm eager to move onto the next painting. Comments welcome and appreciated on this one (as always, but more so on this one since I'm well out of my comfort zone here).

Switching to Photoshop

Due to time constraints I've decided to finish this painting in Photoshop (getting a banjo and spending two hours a day learning how to use it may have had something to do with it). Honestly though, with what I learned on this painting, it would have been almost impossible to paint it like I wanted it to look.  When I was working on Caliban and treating it like watercolor it started to "click" for me, but the rest of the painting had too much paint on it to take washes well.  SO, time for the photoshop magic to begin. Here's where I'm at so far:

I should have it done by Thursday, then I think I'll move on to Little Shop of Horrors (and pick some comic book projects back up).

Making Progress

I have the colors mostly blocked in and am starting to get some details figured out. I still feel like I'm stumbling along with this painting. I have started to "turn the corner" where the painting is shaping up enough for me to be interested and motivated to work on it. I still have a LONG way to go and I have to finish it this weekend.

Mostly I'm happy with how Caliban is shaping up.

Underpainting

Finished the underpainting last night, now its time to start laying in some color. I'm going to try using a gamut mask for any color nerds out there. I first learned about them through the blog of illustrator James Gurney of Dinotopia fame. One of his followers made an online gamut mask tool which can be found here if you're interested. It's going to be hard to limit my colors to the mask, but it should make the piece more harmonious.

Oh, and this is acrylic painting #3 for anybody keeping track. I bought some liquid acyrlics the other day so that I can do washes more easily, I am loving it.

The Tempest

Here's the drawing I've been slaving away at over the last two days. This piece is big (21" x 28") for me and is going to be a blast/terrifying to paint. I'm really excited about this image. I spent a lot of time on the composition and feel that it was time well spent. This is the first of the play posters I plan on creating,  it is also hopefully going to be for charity if it passes the judges.  The image is a photo, and not a scan, so its a bit gray.