Imagine yourself painting a piece that you’ve prepared for since last Christmas.  Everything about it - the concept, the message, the composition, makes it feel like its going to be a total Renaissance masterpiece.  As you start laying down the first strokes you feel extremely confident and decide to go for the details.  Your hand glides through the piece, the colors accentuate your mastery of anatomy and your attention to detail is impeccable.  You lean back to rest your hand and check your work of art. All the details are in the right place, yet something isn’t quite right. Suddenly… it hits you. You realize that you were focused so much on one side of the painting that your magical composition was lost.  Adding to that, you can’t figure out if the painting is facing up or down, left or right and what you’ve painted looks more like a palette after a hard day’s work.  If it was me, I would go completely nuts!

Ok so this painting didn’t end quite like this. It was really a new venture for me and I definitely learned a lot from all the work I put into it as well as all the suggestions I got from the fellow artists at CG Society’s Strange Behavior competition.

Phase 1 - Early Sketches

I started this piece with several sketches that don’t look anything like the final image. These are usually sketches that you leave lying around and that eventually spark an idea.  The basis of the character and the eeriness of the piece came from these sketches. 

Phase 2 - Underpainting

After I had an idea of how these and several other sketches could become a painting, I went ahead and worked on the main underpainting. I usually start with a pencil sketch but because I didn’t have a clear idea in my head, I went for Photoshop - since it’s easier to edit and make changes on the fly. I started my final sketch by blocking in the fundamental shapes and building a basic black/white thumbnail.