Here’s my 2nd ever digital painting.  I think it worked out pretty well in the end, and it was a really great learning experience.  I really wish I had started doing these sooner.  I never realized how much fun it could be to work with straight shape, color and tone as opposed to line and ink.  I think I will continue to develop both processes now.

I tried to follow some concepts introduced by Mattias Snygg, and Mathew Gurney.  Both of those very talented men talk about welding similar colors and planes together.  A good example might be Mike Mignola’s artwork, how all of the shadows blend together into one big mass of black.  This wouldn’t make sense in real life, but our eyes and brains make sense out of it as art.  Simply trying to understand things better from a color standpoint was what pushed me to try more digital, and I find it very rewarding.  I also got a lot of coaching along the way from Dennis Budgen, one of the best illustrators I know, and the people in the Monkeyslunch Art Forum, which you should definitely check out.  Thanks to all the people who are helping me learn this new technique!

This is concept art for an upcoming comic book project, by thee way.  Splatter textures are both scanned and from CGtextures.com.  The Animation of some of the process shown below will loop.