Ok, so things have finally calmed down enough for me to finally post again. Time to make good on my promise and do a nice thorough process post.

The assignment was a poster image for Westmont College, for their upcoming Christmas Festival concert. I was given the sub-theme of “Lo How a Rose” and told to go for it. In many ways, this was a dream assignment—long deadline (which actually got me into trouble because like most illustrators, I’m a dedicated procrastinator), excellent reproduction, creative freedom, and surprisingly, a decent budget.

So, first thing is to do lots and lots of loose thumbnail sketches in any number of sketchbooks that I have lying around. This is the basic concept that I settled on, just a simply depiction of an angel contemplating a rose.

My initial rough sketch, drawn with ballpoint in a sketchbook

Next, it’s time for reference photography. While I follow my sketch, I also try to “sketch with the camera” and try out all kinds of poses. Often times the model will do something I didn’t think of that I end up liking and incorporating into the final piece. Thanks to my sister Kristin for posing.

Once the photography is done, it’s time to create a tight sketch. I really obsessed over this stage, doing five drafts before I was finally happy enough with the drawing to proceed.

The final tight sketch, rendered in graphite on tracing paper

Because I had the luxury of a long deadline, I decided to do a nice finished color comp for this piece. Usually these will be in gouache in my sketchbook, but on this one I decided to gesso a piece of illustration board and do a couple of 8×10 studies in oil. I had a lot of fun painting up the color comps, and below is the one I used as the basis for the final painting. Keep in mind that these process shots are all showing the glare from my drawing table work lights, so they’re not the best shots in the world.

The color comp—oil on gessoed illustration board

I print out a sketch sized to the board I want to work on, which in this case was an 18×24 gessoed masonite panel. I own an Epson 4000 that I got for this express purpose, as it can print out on roll paper. I coat the back of the printout with charcoal powder, and trace it down on the board to transfer it. I hate this stage, but it seems to be a necessary evil. Once the drawing is down, I go over the lines lightly using a Verithin pencil, which makes the linework permanent enough to withstand the next step, which is to put an acrylic wash midtone over the entire piece (hat tip to Kenton Nelson for teaching me the Verithin trick).

Now it’s time to just get in there and paint. I like to start with my dark shadows first, and gradually build up thicker layers of midtones all the way to highlights. Something I picked up from a painting workshop with Steve Huston was to make the color a bit intense in the early layers and then gray it down as you layer on top. Click on any of the detail shots to see a larger close-up.

The above state is as far as I got before having to take a break for a day to catch up on other work, and at that point I simply forgot to document any further stages. But you get the idea. For those who want the truly obsessive details, I like to use M. Graham brand oils, with Walnut Alkyd Medium to keep the paint flowing, speed the drying time, and add a little gloss.

Once the painting was completed, I took it down to Artscans, whom I HIGHLY recommend. They know their stuff. They use a proprietary scanner and software to capture images, and the result was one of the most finely detailed scans of art that I’ve ever laid eyes on. But don’t take my word for it—see for yourself below. Click on the detail shots to see how they really caught every nuance of my brushstrokes. Thanks to Caroline and the whole crew at Artscans!

The final painting

Hope you enjoyed the long post, and I promise I’m going to try and be more frequent about updating this blog. Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments section and I’ll be sure to answer.