Mitt Romney

Just finished a painting of Mitt Romney I've been working on an off on for a couple of weeks now. Painted in Photoshop.

Audrey Hepburn, for a Wittygraphy caricature contest.

Oregon Duck

This was an unusual, but fun, project I did a while back. I was hired to paint the University of Oregon Duck mascot in a portrait style for some merchandising.

NY Observer Cover

My newest NY Observer cover is on newsstands today. The article is about the new style of racism in the world, in which public figures (such as John Galliano, Taki Theodoracopoulus and Ashton Kutcher, seen here) say and do things that range from the racially insensitive to the morally reprehensible. This was another fun assignment. Thanks as always to Lauren Draper.

Hulk Sketch

This is a little sketch painting I did as a tribute to my favorite scene in The Avengers. If you've seen the movie, then you'll know what I'm talking about. If you're one of the two people who hasn't seen it yet, I won't spoil it.

The Commercial Observer

I painted the cover to this week's Commercial Observer "Power 100" issue. The Commercial Observer is one of the sister pubs to the New York Observer. The Power 100 is their annual listing of the top movers and shakers in New York's commercial real estate industry. The trick here was being able to include five figures in the space while giving them something to do; in this case, building the headline. Thanks to Scott and Jotham for a fun assignment.

ImagineFX Image of the Month

Very cool news. My Helena Bonham Carter caricature is the featured Image of the Month in the latest issue of ImagineFX magazine. A few years ago when I decided I wanted to learn how to paint digitally, I began seeking out tips and tutorials everywhere I could. ImagineFX was one of the sources I turned to monthly (still do, actually). Flash forward to today and one of my paintings won one of the weekly forum challenges (a caricature challenge, of course) and is now appearing in the pages of the magazine that helped me learn many of the skills I apply on a daily basis.

The Mortgage Observer

This was a fun little project. I was commissioned by Carl Gaines at The Mortgage Observer (sister publication of The New York Observer) to paint two portraits of a couple of the magazine's columnists. The trick here was to not get too sucked into painting lots of tiny details since these would ultimately print at only a couple of inches tall.

Jennifer Lawrence - Final

I really liked how the sketch I did of Jennifer Lawrence turned out, so I decided to take it to a more finished state.

Jennifer Lawrence Sketch

90 minute sketch of actress Jennifer Lawrence from The Hunger Games.

George Takei

This is a very last minute painting I did for an art fundraiser I just found out about in honor of George Takei's 75th birthday called Takei Back the Night. I knew I wanted to paint Sulu and I thought, why not let my geek hang all the way out and paint the Mirror Universe version, scar and all.

And then this happened...

So apparently Norman Reedus really liked my painting of him.

Christina Hendricks

Here's a painting I did of actress Christina Hendricks from AMC's Mad Men. There's something about the show that keeps me tuning in. I can't quite put my finger on what it is though. ;)

Norman Reedus

I was recently commissioned to do a painting of actor Norman Reedus, who plays my favorite character, Daryl Dixon, on The Walking Dead. I tried to make this a sort of companion piece to my other Walking Dead painting I did recently. As usual, this was painted in Photoshop.

NY Observer Cover

It's New York Observer cover time again. This is NYC Comptroller John Liu, who is currently embroiled in a campaign financing scandal. Design Director Lauren Draper asked for Liu in a classic Nixon pose. Thanks to Lauren, Scott and the other fine folks at the Observer for another fun assignment.

Norman Reedus sketch

Sketch of actor Norman Reedus, who plays my favorite character Daryl Dixon on The Walking Dead. This is the first stage of a commissioned painting I'm working on.

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.