Mr. Tony Soprano

I really tried to get this one to work as a painting instead of a colorized drawing. In the end, I like the final painting more than the initial drawing - which is probably a good sign.

 Breakdown

Another Female Head Study

I've been working on this one for a while, and I'm glad to finally post it! It turned out to be quite a challenge because of the relatively low contrast and the angle of the model's face.

Breakdown

Based on photo reference from CharacterDesigns.com

Mickey Goldmill

You probably know Burgess Meredith by his role in the Rocky films, but did you know that his other roles included the Penguin in the 60s Batman series and the ill-fated Henry Bemis in the classic Twilight Zone episode 'Time Enough at Last'? Simply stated, he was awesome.

I started this one with pencil and used that as a basis for the final digital painting. In pieces like this, I always struggle with resolving the initial line-drawing with the final painting - here I decided to let it show through because I felt like it added a lot of energy to the finished image.

Female Head Study

Here's another study based on a photo taken by Hong Ly (characterdesigns.com). This one took a bit longer than expected because of the hair, woven head-band and unique lighting setup - I was able to paint the face itself relatively quickly. I've heard that you have to struggle with a painting or drawing to learn something new - so this piece certainly taught me a thing or two...

Step-by-step breakdown

Don Draper

Another Head Study

Blondie

Earlier this year, I finally got around to watching the Sergio Leone "Dollars" trilogy and started working on a caricature of Clint Eastwood as he appeared in the films. Here are the stages that the piece went through along with the final result.

I decided to approach this piece by starting with the silhouette. I noodled the outline until I found some shapes and angles that I thought were compelling and interesting to look at, while conveying the laid-back dexterity of the character. For me, it's a bit easier to go into the line-work stage if I'm confident with the overall flow of the piece.

Next, I went in with several stages of line drawing on top of the silhouette. During the line drawing phase, I attempted to work out any issues with the proportions of the silhouette, and tried to clearly define the features of the character. This stage was the most time consuming since I wanted to make sure everything in the piece worked and was relatively clean before moving onto the painting stages.

Before adding color to the piece, I went over the whole thing in black and white. The main difficulty was in clearly differentiating the various materials on the character (skin, denim, metal, etc).

Finally, I added some color on top of the black and white painting with overlay layers. This is similar to using washes on top of a drawing - it preserves the values established in the earlier stages. I wanted the final piece to have that desaturated look that films from the 60s and 70s have, which overlay layers are perfect for. Overall I felt that this piece was a good learning experience and I plan to do more caricatures soon.