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 ;) 

The Hulk

I always like to have something else to inbetween modeling stuff so I decided to work on a Hulk painting.
Mark Rufalo is the perfect actor for the Hulk so been wanting to paint the hulk and banner for a while now.
Heres some progress shots so far. Working on finishing a few other things atm so this will be done inbetween it all. ^_^

 

 

 

Finished piece

 

 

New Painting

Starting on a new painting. Have had this painting in my head for a good while and happy to finally get starting on it. 

Bird painting progression 

I got a little carried away with painting this bird as it is only a small portion of the actual painting it is for, but I was enjoying it and thought it would make a nice little painting itself ^_^

The above painting is intended to be a painting on a traditional Japanese sliding door (Fusuma) which will be in the background of the painting.

Sketch of the full painting.

Above is the initial sketch I did for this painting with the progress of the bird thrown in for a quick idea of how things are going to fit together.

Working my way through the details

Halfway finished the kimono

Quarter of Kimono left to paint

Kung Fu

Drawing of Shaolin Monk named Wang Bo.

Shaolin Kung~Fu

Geisha Sketches

 

Groot Sketch

Felt like doing a groot sketch after watching the movie :)

 

 

Tiger Drawing

Did a drawing of a tiger this week to get some inspiration and ideas for my next painting. Got a bit more into this drawing than I originaly intended but glad I did. :)



 

Metal Gear Sketchaton

Got too restless waiting for Ground Zeroes to be released so had to do some sketches. I may do some more soon but have other plans atm lolz



Very Interesting Character This Skull Face

 

Kate Beckinsale

I Was aksed to do a painting of Kate Beckinsale so I started on the sketch. Worked on this sketch a little more than usual for a pre painting sketch.



I decided to make a little progression video for this painting to let people see the process of my paintings a bit more. Enjoy :)