My Process

I've had more the one person ask me recently to describe my process when I paint, so here are some of the steps I put into my painting of Rooney Mara from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

I started with a sketch, based on the reference you can see here. I did this sketch in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, but I've gone ahead and drawn straight in Photoshop as well plenty of times. BTW, I'm using Photoshop CS4. I work large, so I set my canvas size to 3000 pixels wide by 3700 pixels tall at 300 dpi. With the sketch on its own layer, I set that layer to multiply, then added another layer below that which I flooded with color. I very rarely paint over a pure white background. It makes it a lot easier to create a uniform tone throughout the painting, plus staring at all that harsh white would be murder on my eyes after a while. You'll also notice I created one more layer above all the others where I've started creating my palette. I'll add to the palette as I go along, but for now what you see here will be my base colors.

 As for my brushes, I've collected a pretty large library of brushes from various sources, along with some I've created on my own, but the two main brushes I used here are a simple hard round brush with the settings you see above, and one of the standard Photoshop rough-edged brushes that I've clicked on the same settings as the hard round.

 Now, I add another layer below the sketch layer, but above the background color layer. On this layer I block in my base colors with the hard round brush. I always paint with the brush opacity set to 90% and the flow to 100%. Don't worry about being too neat here, you've got a long way to go and you'll be covering most of this up as you go along.

Once you have your base colors and lighting established below the sketch layer, then you're ready to move onto the heavy duty painting. I create one more layer above the sketch layer (I label mine "Paint", but call it whatever you want). I stay zoomed out so that I can see the entire portrait while I paint. The work will go a lot faster and you won't get tied up focusing on tiny details that will get lost anyway by working this way. I've started working now switching between the hard round and the rough edged brush. The rough edged brush gives a more a painterly look. I like to see the brush strokes in my paintings. I work dark to light, or in other words, I paint in my darkest darks first, working my way through the midtones and eventually to the brightest highlights. The overall tone of the reference is pretty dark, so you'll notice I haven't used any white at all up til now. Only after I'm satisfied with how things are going, do I start to zoom in and tighten up details such as the eyes and mouth.

I drew a Chinese dragon on paper with my favorite brush pen, the Pentel Pocket Brush, and scanned it in. I copied and pasted this drawing onto a new channel in my painting.

I used that channel to create a selection on a new layer behind my main painting. I filled that selection with white, then I used the motion blur filter to give it a sense of movement. I've also dragged in a couple more scans of some actual paint splashes and played around with the layer styles and opacity until I came up with a somewhat natural looking mix. I've also started roughing in some some additional texture to the background with a couple of custom texture brushes I have in my collection. The last detail is to draw in a rough white outline around the figure to help tie the foreground into the background line art.

Rooney Mara

Since I did a painting recently of Daniel Craig, I thought it might be fun to paint his co-star, and the title character from, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Here's Rooney Mara in all her gothy glory.

R.I.P. Whitney Houston

I did a sketch of Whitney Houston after hearing of her passing. This is about an hour in Sketchbook Pro.

Ink Sketch

Every so often the old ADD kicks in and I like to try some new techniques. For the heck of it I grabbed a real brush and real India Ink and did some sketching, and what do you know? It was fun. Here's a quick sketch I did of the fine British actor Idris Elba.

Princess Leia

One of my very favorite apps for the Mac is Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro. I use it all the time for sketching because it's digital pencils feel just about as close to the real thing as you can get. I use the pencils so much I've kind of neglected the other great tools the program has. Last night I tried to rectify that by playing with the digital markers and brushes. The result is this sketch of Princess Leia.

New York Observer

It was my turn for another NY Observer cover this week. This week's cover story was about the current outrage over the SOPA and PIPA bills that were getting rammed through Congress before public outcry as well as several very visible protests by several major websites put those bills on hold. The article focuses in particular on the fact that most of the Congressionsl leaders (such as Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, seen here) don't have a clue about how the Internet actually works. Thanks to Lauren and Scott at the NYO for another fun job.

Martin Luther King sketch

Today is Martin Luther King Day, so in honor I did a sketch of the great man over lunch. Ballpoint pen in the ol' sketchbook.

Final Helena Bonham Carter

I'm calling this one done. I wasn't digging the original color scheme, but I think it all came together when I decided to use green as my focal color. The hair was particularly fun to paint, and probably took nearly as long as the entire rest of the image. Her hair is actually more brown, but I darkened it here in order to blend in better with the background.

NEW! I just heard a very cool development. This caricature won the weekly MYFX challenge over on the forums for one of my very favorite magazines ImagineFX. There were a bunch of great entries so I'm flattered that I won the most votes. Thanks to everyone who voted for me.

HBC- wip 3

I have the main structure worked out o. HBC. Now it's all about working out the fine details, such as the hair from here.

Helena Bonham Carter - Progress

More progress on HBC. Once I'm happy with the overall structure, I start zooming in very tight and begin working with a progression of smaller and smaller brushes to tighten up details.

Helena Bonham Carter - WIP

This is the very early stage of a painting I'm doing of Helena Bonham Carter in full Bellatrix Lestrange garb. This is the block-in stage, and I'll be the first to admit it looks pretty ugly right now. For those interested in such things, what I've done thus far in Photoshop is do my sketch on a separate layer, then on another layer below and one above the sketch layer, I've begun laying in rough color with a basic hard round Photoshop brush I've made a few tweaks to. From here I'll continue tightening up details and moving on to using a couple of other custom brushes as well.

Daniel Craig

I decided to try a caricature of Daniel Craig. The trick here with him is he has so many caricaturable features you really have to pick and choose what you're going to exaggerate. I decided I'd focus primarily on his jutting ears and especially his huge, neanderthal brow. As usual, this was painted in Photoshop.

The Krampus Christmas Special

Of all the Rankin & Bass Christmas specials, I can never believe they never did one featuring the Krampus, so here's my interpretation. Merry Christmas everyone!

Bruce Lee

Quickie caricature of Bruce Lee for this week's Caricaturama challenge on Facebook.

Ricky Gervais

Here's my entry into this week's Caricaturama challenge on Facebook. This week's victim is Ricky Gervais.

The New York Observer

Here's my latest cover for the New York Observer. Because of the short week for the folks at the Observer, I actually had all weekend to work on this for a change. Even still, I kind of wish I still had another day to work on it. Oh well, such is the life of an illustrator. The article has to do with three city leaders (John Liu, Bill DeBlasio and Scott Stringer) and their reaction to Mayor Bloomberg's treatment of the Occupy Wall Streeters.

Mitt Romney Sketch

Quickie sketch of Mitt Romney. About 40 minutes in Photoshop.

The Walking Dead

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I loooovvvveee zombies. So it goes without saying that I'm a tremendous fan of the Walking Dead TV show and comics. I really wanted to try something different with my next portfolio piece. I've been working on this on and off for the last two weeks and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Frankenstein

I liked how my Bela Lugosi painting came out, so I decided to move onto the next logical choice. Here's my take on Boris Karloff in his most famous role. Once again, I was trying to emulate the look and feel of the Famous Monsters of Filmland covers I like so much.

NY Observer cover

Here's my latest New York Observer cover. This one was a little difficult illustrating because it was more of an abstract concept than usual. The story has to do with the ultra-elite Manhattan private school for girls The Spence School (Gwyneth Paltrow, among others, went there). The school is building an ultra modern glass breezeway connecting two of the buildings on their campus and the local residents are up in arms because it doesn't mesh with the local architecture (jeez, this is seriously the biggest thing these people have to complain about?). Here's the idea I came up with: several of the locals pressed up against a glass wall with a snooty, oblivious schoolgirl in the foreground.

Herman Cain sketch

Here's a sketchy painting I did of current G.O.P. Presidential candidate flavor of the month Herman Cain. This took about 90 minutes in Photoshop.

Bela Lugosi color

I went in and added color to my Lugosi painting. I took my visual cues here from the work of the great illustrator Basil Gogos, who gained fame in the 60's and 70's for painting many amazing covers for Forry Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland. One of the things I loved most about those covers were the artist's remarkable color palettes he used. They were all ultra bright and shouldn't have made any sense, but somehow they did.

Bela Lugosi Black and White

Every year around Halloween I try to do at least one monster painting. This year is the great Bela Lugosi. I think I'm going to try colorizing this and seeing how it goes.

Cheyenne

A while back I found a really incredible set of vintage photos online of a bunch of Native Americans taken sometime in the late 1800s. This is a member of the Cheyenne tribe. He had such an incredible face, I just had to paint him.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

I heard the news last night that Steve Jobs had died. It's truly sad day for the entire world he helped change. There aren't many people you can call a true visionary, but Steve was one of them. I've been using Apple products for most of my adult life. I spent about an hour sketching him on one such device last night.

Mila Kunis

Here's a painting I've been working on and off on for a little while of actress Mila Kunis. I was tempted to paint a Meg Griffin hat on her head, but I didn't think most people would get the joke.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Several months back I was hired to do a cover for the Nashville City Paper. It's a long story, but the short version goes there was a bit of a mixup with the schedule and as it turns out I had to turn around the entire cover in just about seven hours. This is far and away the shortest time I've ever had to do a cover for any publication and on top of that there was surprisingly little photo reference to be had of the people I had to paint. I finished on time, but I wasn't really happy with the result, but at the time I figured at least it was done and that's what mattered. The story, incidentally, had to do with a crazy contract/real estate deal involving three former Kansas City Royals, Dan Quisenberry, George Brett and Willie Wilson. Today the AD from The City Paper realized he never sent me a copy of the cover to show me how the final layout turned out. I have to admit, seeing it now months later, I like how it turned out better than I did before.

New York Observer Cover

Here's my latest New York Observer cover. This one was particularly difficult because it was almost impossible to find a photo of the main subject. The article is about a guy named Bill O'Reilly (no, not that one). He's a Republican political strategist who ran the campaign of Bill Turner, who won Anthony Weiner's House seat in a heavily Democratic district. After much searching, I only found a single, not very good photo of the guy. I take a little comfort in knowing that even if I messed up the likeness. No one is going to know what he looks like anyway.

Peter Dinklage

I cleaned up my painting of Peter Dinklage and added some color. Here's how it turned out.

Peter Dinklage WIP

I started painting over a ballpoint pen sketch I did of actor Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister on one of my favorite shows, Game of Thrones. My man Peter just won an Emmy for his role, so now seemed like as good a time as any. This is my result after about 90 minutes. I think I might polish it up some more and take it to a more finished piece.

John Krasinski

I have to confess, I've hardly ever watched NBC's The Office. Mostly because I love the original British version of the show and I always found the American version to be a pale imitation. Here's my version of series star John Krasinski for this week's Caricaturama challenge over on FaceBook.

Sting Sketch

Here's a digital sketch I did of Sting as he appeared in the movie Dune. This was done for one of the Caricaturama challenges over on FaceBook. I kept it fairly loose. You can actually still see the undersketch through the digital paint.

Lord Alan Sugar

This is a cover illustration I did for a new U.K. iPad-only publication called The Browser. This is Lord Alan Sugar, host of the British version of The Apprentice. This is my preferred version of the cover, which is slightly different from what will actually appear.

James Franco

I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes the other day (terrific movie, BTW). As anyone who does caricatures for a living can tell you, after you do it for a while you start to size up everyone you see to determine how you'd distort that person's features. In this case, after staring at James Franco up on the screen for a couple hours I began to notice his overlong chin and ever-stoned look. Eventually, those observations led to this.

Lady Gaga

Here's a painting I just finished of Lady Gaga. I took this one as a bit of a personal challenge. She was a bit of a tough one to caricature, not because her features weren't distinctive, but because she's always either changing her appearance or covering up her features behind huge glasses and other crazy crap. This is based on this Rolling Stone cover, BTW.

New York Observer Cover

Here's my latest NY Observer cover. This was an ultra-rush for the magazine, so I had to pull out a bunch of time-saving tricks in order to get it done on time. The basic premise behind this illustration involved a series of editorial shake-ups at Conde Nast publishing over trouble they've had launching their iPad versions of their magazines. The idea was to show their art director as an app on the tablet behind deleted by the Conde Nast publisher. The pad and the icons are fully illustrated vector objects created in Adobe Illustrator and the hands are painted in Photoshop. This cover was especially bittersweet because it was the very last cover by the awesome Design Director Ivy Simones, who has moved on to another job with another publication. Ivy will be missed.

Peter Dinklage

Here's a recent ballpoint pen sketch I did of my favorite character from one of my favorite shows. This  is actor Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

New York Observer Cover

I got to do another cover illustration for the ever-awesome Ivy Simones at the New York Observer. This is for their Gay Power List issue. From left to right are New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, movie producer Scott Rudin, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and fashion designer Marc Jacobs. I had a little more time than usual on this cover, so I really had time to focus on the likenesses and some of the fine details of each of their individual features.

Courtney Love

Here's a painting I did of Courtney Love for this week's Caricaturama Challenge over on Facebook.

Gil Scott Heron

I heard the sad news today that the great musician and poet Gil Scott Heron died. Here's a digital sketch I did as a tribute to the man.

Donald Trump

I decided to give a go at everyone's favorite almost Republican Presidential Candidate The Donald. This was painted in Photoshop and the new and awesome Corel Painter 12.

Robert Johnson

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the great blues guitarist Robert Johnson's birth. So the legend goes that when Johnson was young he met the devil at a crossroads and he sold his soul in return for his musical talent. Here's a painting I did to commemorate the date.

Franz Kafka for Kids

The current Caricaturama challenge over on Facebook is one of my personal favorite writers Franz Kafka. There's a ton of brilliant work being produced for this challenge. I wanted to try something completely different though, which led me to thinking what a Franz Kafka children's book would look like, an idea that amuses the heck out of me. So here's my take on a childhood classic.

David Letterman sketch

Here's a digital sketch of Letterman I was messing around with. I'm not sure if I'm going to clean it up or not. It's still pretty rough, but I think the likeness is there.