John 5 Painting

I had an itch to paint John 5 and this is the result of that itch.

I wanted to give myself a new challenge when I started painting this and so I gave myself a time limit to paint it.  This painting took me about 4 hours overall to complete and a second look over the following day to add a few final touches ect.

There's a funny story to go with this piece. I never intended to make the splashes on this painting but while I was painting my dog decided to stand all over my wacom tablet and afterwards I started painting again and realized she somehow picked a brush I didn't know I had and I ended up with a few splashes all over the painting. 

I thought it looked interesting and decided to keep the "mistake" on a seperate layer and then eventually go all the way with the idea. 

Happy accidents are still alive and kicking :)

Below is a look at how this painting came together.

Kept the brushwork loose and slightly messy almost like a charcoal piece

Snowfall (Geisha)

Been working on this painting for a while, jumping back and forth from different projects.

But got the time to work on it and get it finished.
This painting went through a lot of changes but I got it to where I am happy with it.
I was a little torn between 2 ideas for this.

Above are few work in progress images. The initial sketches showed the idea of her walking through a street in Gion but after painting in a rough idea of the colors I wasnt really happy with it and so I decided to go with the mysterious setting instead :)

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 ;)