"Watering Hole" with process ...

So, as promised, an actual art related post. I've also included some in progress shots to give you all an abridged version of my process. I say abridged because once I really got into painting I sort of dropped the ball on the play-by-play idea.

The idea for this painting was actually an old one. I doodle from time to time, though not as much as I should, and these doodles are usually little character designs or painting ideas. I took one such character doodle from a few months ago and began experimenting with some quick thumbnails, and when I got one I liked I blew it up and made a loose drawing from it. Like so ...

Then I used the loose drawing as a basis for a tighter final drawing.

You can see I made a few corrections, and changed a lot of the stuff that was bugging me about the preliminary sketch. After that was finished I decided to do a quick color study to figure out my light sources and whatnot. I don't always do this step but this painting was going to be a bit more complicated, so I opted for the extra step.

Now painting starts.

I blocked the background in in black and white, which gives me a lot more control over the value and fell. This is actually a relatively new technique for me, I've only used it a couple of times and I'm still getting the hang of it.
After I finished blocking in the background I used thin washes of color to bring it into line with my color study. In addition to being easier to control this style of backgrounds is also much faster and waists a lot less paint. Now fast forward a few nights hard labor, and ... viola!

"Watering Hole"

Wow, I apologize for my astounding powers of laziness because that kind of time skip really doesn't show you much in the way of process, but I digress. If somebody asks real nice I might actually do a more succinct play-by-play, you know one that actually shows process. In the mean time, enjoy, this piece will be up at the Hive's next group show this Saturday for a very reasonable $100. Huzzah!