Chinese New Year: Year Of The Monkey

Kung Hei Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year!

I Painted this in the spur of the moment today.
Instead of showing some progression shots I thought I'd spice things up a bit and instead show how I used layers for this piece.

Its a simple overall layout I use for these kinds of paintings/drawings.
I try to keep the layers to a minimum, mainly working on 2-3 layers until the very end when I add background highlights and a very small tint of color to the monkey and the tree, (Barely visible but its there). The text and Chinese writing is also on separate layers to add a slight glow around them.


1st I filled the background layer with a desaturated creamy/brown color which will allow me to make highlights on top of that layer to show through.

I used a custom brush I made to sketch the monkey loosely.

I create a new layer and set the current/previous sketch layer's opacity down to around 20% and start to refine and finish the sketch. I leave the two sketch layers there, If you look close you can make out the 1st sketch underneath the overall painting.

This is the details/shading layer. with the Chinese calligraphy and happy new year text added to it. 

This is highlights layer which is on top of the details layer so the highlights go over the darker lines. I don't paint the highlights completely separately to the detail layer. I do both at the same time, switching back and forth to layers as I go and work my way around the whole piece.

Lastly I add a tint of color to the monkey and the tree on an overlay layer set to 15-20% The color is barely visible. Then I add highlights to the top of the background layer to brighten up the top of the piece as a light to look to for the future ;)