Holy airbrush Batman! I think I had a little too much fun using that thing, but it's okay, I'll tighten it back up in the next step. Still need to finesse some edges but overall I think I have my values mostly where I want them. Thick paint next to make it really sing. #art #portrait #painting #acrylicpainting #airbrush

First pass with paint! This is done with incredibly thin acrylics and a wet brush to allow the underdrawing and black to continue to shine through. The reason that I'm using acrylic, mostly golden heavy body mixed with a ton of water, instead of something like gouache or watercolor is because I don't want the paint to be reactivating with subsequent washes. I can get away with this amount of thinning as well because I'm working on raw illustration board, so the paint is absorbed into the paper. If it was gessoed, or this was a stretched canvas, I would be worried about adhesion and might prefer something like an airbrush. I know acrylic gouache doesn't reactivate, but I'm working with what I got here haha. Speaking of airbrush, that's probably my next step! I want to get the edges on her face as soft as possible. Right now I think there's too many hard transitions. Then I'll come back in with a pass of more opaque paint in order to really pick out those edges how I want them. Stay tuned! #art #portrait #acrylicpainting #fanart #painting

Step 2 of the Katherine Hepburn illustration. Establishing the darkest darks and plenty of texture with black gesso, turning it from a drawing into a painting. A lot of this will be covered up as the painting goes through the color layering process, but not all of it will. It gives a pleasant noise to the final image that is hard to produce any other way. I especially like to use a heavy splatter effect to harmonize the graphite with the paint. Stay tuned for the next step: transparent color! #art #portrait #painting #illustration #goldenageofhollywood

Just a quick sketch of Clint Eastwood as The Preacher from "Pale Rider." Because why not? Also, heard he's finally retiring from movie making at, get this, 96 years old. What an amazing career... From Rawhide 70 years ago till now. What was his last movie he directed? Juror No. 9? That is a good movie! That generation was just built different. #sketchbook #graphite #drawing #portrait #fanart

Figured I'd stretch this one out by posting WIP pics. This is going to be a similar piece to my Humphrey Bogart, only obviously it's Katherine Hepburn haha. This feels like the beginning of a series... So watch this space for more classic Hollywood star illustrations! Going straight onto a crescent illustration board, I work up a fairly finished pencil sketch, except here I used a little prismacolor to begin the halftones with some soft color instead of the graphite. This will help when I begin the painting process to add some warmth and round the form more smoothly. Young Katherine has very delicate looking skin so I want to try to preserve that as much as possible here, whereas Humphrey, being an older gentleman in that painting, has a ton of texture, wrinkles, etc. Next step coming up soon! #goldenageofhollywood #drawing #portrait #fanart #illustration

Some ballpoint pen sketches after Frank frazetta and Jeff Watts. I really like just using a plain old Bic for these. Something satisfying about it that I can't explain haha. #ballpointpenart #sketchbook #wattsonbridgman #drawing #art

A few quicker charcoal studies/sketches of Bridgman and Jeff Watts. I'm running out of my backlog of art photos so my posts might be less frequent now. Not that it matters because nobody really looks at this stuff anyway haha. #wattsonbridgman #charcoal #anatomy #humanfigure #drawing

As one moves along their journey in life, one may occasionally feel it's necessary to test oneself. To see what they are truly capable of if they put their maximum effort into something. To make something that expresses the full extent of their abilities. A piece to represent the culmination of their current progress. My friends, this was my objective with this portrait. To see what I can do NOW, with all I have learned. Two ish years ago I set out to be able to realistically reproduce the human face and form, ultimately aiming at painting oil portraits ala Sargent with high accuracy and realism, but also to be able to create my own illustrations for a graphic novel idea I have. Many influences have guided me. I have synthesized many ideas. This is the result. Not Sargent for sure, and not comic book looking art at all, but some weird hybrid. A mutant version of classic portraiture and pop/graphic art. Let me tell you, this painting nearly broke me. But it didn't. Even though the challenge felt insurmountable, that I would never achieve the vision in my heart, I persevered. At one point I threw it in the trash. Another point I sprayed it with water and tried to wipe it away. I considered gessoing over it and starting from scratch. Yet still I kept after it. Obsessively. All day and most of the night, only taking breaks to eat and go to the restroom. What I turned out may not be great. It might not even be good when taking into consideration my overarching goals. But it's the absolute best I could do without going insane, and for that and the fact that I stuck it out, I am hugely proud. I feel like I'm starting to develop something of a personal style, too, which is neat. The journey may not always take you where you think you should go, but I find it usually always takes you where you need to be. Humphrey Bogart. Mixed media on illustration board. Reference credit to Yousuf Karsh. #goldenageofhollywood #celebrityportrait #mixedmedia #acrylicpainting #humphreybogart

A digital painting I did of my khaleesi Emilia Clarke a few years ago, from the cover of observer magazine. All rights to them and the original photographer. This was one of my first digital paintings and I think it shows, haha, but it's also one of my favorites. It's Emilia Clarke. Nuff said. #digitalart #gameofthrones #danaerystargaryen #fanart #art

A master copy I did a few years ago from the great @thealexrossart All credit goes to him. The Universal monster mash in mixed media. Lon Cheney Jr Wolf Man, Elsa Lancaster The Bride, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Boris Karloff The Monster and the Mummy, Claude Rains Invisible Man, and of course Bela Legosi Dracula. Some of these movies are over 90 years old. Still iconic and still better than a lot of what comes out today. If you're a horror fan but haven't seen at least all of these movies, time to change that haha. You won't be disappointed. #universalmonsters #drawing #mixedmedia #horrorart #monstermash