How I Do A Digital Painting...

My idea for this particular drawing was inspired from a friend of mine, Adam Glendye, who suggested this:

Mark. I want to see you draw a doodle of a rabid emu approaching a massive thunderstorm! (remember that those who have rabies are afraid of water)


So with that brilliant but odd suggestion I began sketching out ideas. Eventually I settled upon the drawing you see below you done with my handy-dandy non-photo blue pencil.

Having scanned and cleaned the drawing in Photoshop I set about blocking the base colors for the final image. Blocking color in basically means just applying a middle grade of a color with no color variations to the image. Nothing too fancy has been done to the image yet.
Finally the fun can begin!! Having blocked in the colors with a basic color makes it easier for me to choose what color I want to start out with. I use the Magic Wand to select the base color and then I go to work on it. Usually (As was the case here) I try to start with the main figure as this is the most important element to the composition.

Everything just kinda progresses from that point until you get your final image. As you can tell some colors changed throughout the piece as I wasn't liking how the color interacted with one another.

Finally..SLAM! BAM! Thanky mam! You get the final image:

Well I hope this view into how I work was informative to you and more importantly COOL as it was for me to do. Adam thanks for the suggestion and I hope you like it.

Nothing Like A Fat Lady In A Tree

This is what happens when you listen to friends for ideas for inspiration. Let me start from the beginning...While driving around Savannah with a good friend of mine Bryan McManus, He saw these great barren trees (It is winter y'know.) buffering the street. He immediately blurted out how these trees would be perfect for a fat lady to sit between their limbs and me being a visual thinker I thought of something to the image you see before you.

As always I tried to stretch my artistic abilities by trying something I might not have tried before. On this particular image i decided to use colored ink on the substantial figure you see perched in the tree. I also tried to layer my watercolor layers up slowly. I think it was overall an effective experimental piece.