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I haven’t done a work in progress set in a while, so here you go.

The pencils aren’t mine. This is a job where I’m doing the painting from someone else’s design work. This pencil illustration is by Jason Engle ( www.jaestudio.com/ ), the cover for a project at savage mojo (http://www.savagemojo.com/tiki-index.php)

To start, I created my layers in Photoshop, and made the top layer a copy of the pencil illustration set to "multiply", toned red. This Multiply setting is transparent, so it lets me paint under the linework while still seeing the linework. I tone it red since I’ll be scuffing the lines into the illustration at a later point, and I don’t want to muddy the colors with black.

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Next, I got to working on the background first. This sets the whole tone for the piece, and since the atmosphere is a big deal to this illustration, it becomes even more important. Everything is very rough at this stage, and in the middle values. You can see how the multiplied layer keeps it easy to see what I’m doing, and I what I need to do in the future.

More soon. Honestly! I know I haven’t been around much, but I’ve been super busy, some of it under NDA contract, some of it just not arty or interesting. With any luck, more things worth posting from here out.

Sorry to be out of touch for a few days. I was a bit ill since the weekend, and got very little done. Now I’m back at work and starting a piece I’ve had on the table for a long time, neglected. You can see the thumbnail concept sketch below.

This is a simple sepia ink line drawing to start, on some of my tea stained paper. I’m going to do a water color wash after this, and then decide what direction I am going to go from there. Right now I’m considering developing it both with traditional media and digital over traditional for a mixed media effect, to see which end result I like the best.