My Latest Challenge – A Total Success

I just finished a commission that pushed and challenged my creative and technical skill set, and I outwitted my inner critic!  Here is the piece.  Keep reading to see how and why I created this piece.

Final Piece

The Client

My client is one Eric Posman, a producer for ESPN and a sports writer.  Posman came to me with a photograph of his children looking out a window of a high rise hotel in NYC.  His request?  He wanted a piece of work showing his children looking out into a fantastic world that reflects today’s culture with a twist towards the children and the incredible possibilities of their futures.  Sounds fun!  Sounds hard…

The Process

Brainstorming

I started this project with my trusty mind-mapping technique (fig A).  I fist made a list of nouns that refer to New York, today’s children, movies, books, and cultural icons.  I then did a free drawing that I am, quite honestly a little embarrassed to post here as it is very infantile, but it was so much fun to draw!  It also allowed my mind a chance to think visually. I really enjoyed it as a brainstorming activity, and I think I will incorporate it more often into my planning stages (fig B).

fig. A The Mindmap for Posman Project

Reference Collecting

From there, I began to collect references of New York and other characters and images that crept into my brainstorming sessions.  All-in-all, I collected over 60 different photo references some of which added to the ideas already conceived and some of them changed my ideas completely.

Thumbnails

My next step was to devise a composition or layout plan for the piece (figs C, D, E, F).  I completed several different thumbnail sketches that would have made my grad school professors cringe…  Thank goodness I wasn’t graded

Fig C

Fig D

Fig E

Fig F

Preliminary Drawing

After choosing the thumbnail I liked the best, I began my preliminary drawing incorporating the thumbnail, the references, and the results from the brainstorming sessions.  I drafted the drawing to size at 20″ x 16″.  I then made a few modifications with overlapping tracing paper.  It was at the point I was ready to meet with Posman again.  I wanted to get his take on the direction I was heading.  I also wanted to pick his brain about his children’s likes and dislikes.  Eric Posman was able to help draft the drawing in it’s final stages.

Preliminary Dawing

The Final Piece

Finally I was able to mock up the final piece in a digital collage combining my drawings, my references, and digital painting with my Wacom tablet.  This step is not one that I often use, but it made sense with the amount of information and imagery going on within this one piece.  I used this step as well to prepare a color plan for the final painting.

Color Planning Digitally painted

NOw for the final Art!!  Wooo Hooo!

After all of these steps, I finally get to paint the picture.  I first redraw the entire scene on Clayboard in pencil and then I inked the board.  After allowing the ink to dry, I sprayed the board with a healthy dose of Krylon Crystal Clear to seal the ink.  I painted the images with many different painting techniques, including wet-on-wet, glazing and dry brush.  After the paint dried, I reinked some of the areas.  The piece was finished with a protective coating.

Drum roll please….

Final Piece

I think I would have gotten an A+ on this guy!  Thank you for the challenge, Mr Posman.  Let’s do it again sometime!