Green Lantern: Blackest Night Finished.

Wow.. Does it take this long to finish a painting.. I guess, honestly, no- I've had other freelance design work to do, but I have to admit.. It did take a while..

I really wanted to control the colors in BG images.. I wanted them to feel as monochrome as possible, and not get too bright and compete with the main figure.

I've posted a version just before I finished the main figure.. I like some parts of this figure before I finished it, more than the finished one...

The main figure was a bit of a challenge too.. He needed to come off looking "black" as in the color, without actually being too dark.

I do have a few very small tweaks and additions to make.. But here is the final.

Blackest Night Progress

I've been toiling with my blackest night painting this week.. Just finished laying down the shadows for just about all of the characters.

I dropped out the elephant woman in the Blue lantern panel.. And I've decided to take out the third top figure in the Sapphire lantern panel( I'll just cover her up with some opaque BG color)

Blackest Night : color sketch

Okay.. Here's the color prelim for my Blackest Night Painting..

Onto the final!

The Blackest Night.

Okay.. Here's my next painting.

One of my studio mates got me interested in the story, and plot line and history are pretty fun to look into..

I'd love to do one for all of the lantern Corps.. Maybe one day..

But for now I wanted to do one that incorporated them all. And with the full color spectrum represented, I think this one is going to be pretty fun, and right up my alley..

I'm really looking forward to depicting the black lantern in the center.. Don't know if I'm going to do a monochrome BW, or just hit it will all the colors to create the "black look"

Well hopefully I can post the comp tomorrow ..

I've included the thumbnail, about 2x1 inches too. I scanned that, blew it up ,and did the BW sketch.

Drow Vs. Mindflayer

I started this as an entry to a contest over at Artorder. It was for a book cover, and I think not fully understanding the design challenges for book covers threw off my mojo..

It took me literally over 8 hours( and more) to settle on a concept.. And then I got to painting, but realized I didn't like the layout.. I felt I was flying blind so I scrapped it..

I'd like to revisit it, but I would start completely new..

I definitely have a morgue of pantings gone wrong, but it's been sometime since I had one I couldn't complete. Usually I make sure the composition is sound, and from there I can make it work.. For this one, I think the composition isn't working, so I couldn't put my heart to finish it.

Drink And Draw

Last Monday's Drink and draw featuring Chris and Miracole Burns..

The original Monk.

Yep. I'm talking about Thelonious Monk( not the the tv show). This is a late commission from Heroes Con.. It took a while for me to settle on a final composition.. I decided to focus on his face.. Initially I tried to incorporate the piano, but the face became too small.

And the whole "Monk at the piano" has been done countless time.. I didn't think we needed another version( read imitation) of that.

Here is the prelim and the final.