I heard you say, “Do more watersports themed pieces! Please!” Well, I aim to please. Let’s jump right in.
Since I was very cautious and saved incremental versions while I painted just in case my computer hard drive exploded like last time, I can do a kind of a walk through on how I did this one. Remember, to take a closer look, click, hover the mouse over the image and then click the icon in the upper right hand corner to make very large so you can look at it better.
First we begin with the inked in sketch, like so:
Then we lay down the base paint. Since I was going for that E.R. Hughes kind of feel (like I explained in yesterday’s post) I put down a nice color wash. I think about lighting, mood, and my color palette.
After this, on a new layer, I start laying in the base colors for our little perverted, yellow hanky loving fairies, including their gear, things they are holding and the Green Man motif in the center.
Since all of the guys in this are different, they will each get their own unique set of wings. At this point in the process, I keep the wings bright. I enjoyed this part because I finally found a decent use for the “dissolve” setting for my airbrush. If you look closely, the layers of color give a sparkly kind of feel to the wings. I blur each set of wings to take the hardness off the speckles. I also paint the piss showering down.
I add shading and more detail to the characters and foreground items, color to the river pebbles they are frolicking around, add some visual variation to the Green Man and change the color of the socks the Hairy Daddy Fairy is wearing to keep the eye flowing and to balance my color palette out some more.
Next, I jump back to my background wash that I initially laid down and airbrush and burn in the river bank and start accentuating the fact that they are on the water’s edge. The river bank needs to be a darker color to push it back visually and the river needs to reflect the moon that is filtering through the tree canopy. Then I pull a “Bob Ross” and do lots of directional blurring and adding surface ripples to make it look like a watery surface.
I’m still not completely there. I need something in the middle ground, right behind the two fairies on the top to push the whole scene forward, so I lay in some shrubbery, bushes, and riverbank grasses. To set the visual plain of the water, I need some sort of river bank and grass, so I put that in and start creating reflections in the water of the stuff closest to it. To make the piss pop some more, I add reflective light where it arcs, reflecting the moonlight.
After this, I add some pixie dust. I use a brush that is kind of spiky and lay down the shimmering color around the fairy wings. I duplicate the layer and set it to “dissolve” which adds even more stippling/sparkles. I accentuate the antennae of the fairies with a more vibrant color from their wings. They are excited after all! Note that I’ve also plunked in some rather awkward circles…
These are to become those will-o-wisps or fairy lights that dance about the enchanted forest. These will help add more atmosphere to the scene. After this, I zoom in 100% to make sure I haven’t missed any stupid gaps in the work where the color overlaps or doesn’t quite reach my inked drawing. When it’s all done, I save the 1 GB file down to my server. Voila! A piss party!
April Showers - ©2012 - by Drub
As with all my images in the gallery, they are available in 13″x19″ limited edition, fine art prints or as a pack of 5 blank, greeting cards, with envelope. Drop me a note and hit the Contact link above and let me know what you want! Enjoy. 