I have been working on a painting recently for my son who is developing a web comic series. He has some great ideas and asked me to paint a "cover" illustration for his soon to be unveiled (like Christmas or soon thereafter) site.
The illustration has evolved in stages, and I photographed each stage to send to my son. I thought I'd share that here as an ongoing "work in progress" blog.
The criteria for this illustration were:
It should feature his "furry" character who is part fox, part human. He was inspired by his avatar in Second Life. The character is involved in an ongoing war-type scheme involving "world domination". Don't ask me, ask him. I'm clueless here cause when he tries to explain it, my eyes start to glaze over and roll back into my head. (sorry joey!) Anywho...one of his favorite MMORPG games is Call of Duty, so he asked me to make his cover art similar to CoD's artwork. Basically I looked at the image and took it from there.
Here's stage one and you can see the composition is really similar:
Joey has drawn lots of what he calls "mechs" which are kind of Star Wars meets Halo mechanical battle-type vehicles. He asked me to add in several of these, most specifically a battle helicopter and a couple of walkers. So here's stage 2 and 3 showing that:
As you can see, the background is developing and I'm trying to get some depth. Also the figure is becoming more detailed. The surface I'm using is a very textured one. It's basically a gessoed canvas with rough sand poured on top and gessoed again. It's a wonderful, gritty texture and I think it adds a lot to the piece.
I'm really liking where this project is going and am having lots of fun collaborating with my kid on it! I had no idea how really smart and creative he is!
When next I asked him for more detailed information on the figure's armor and weaponry, he sent me some images and I incorporated those into the next stage:
So this is where the painting is thus far. I am still working on it and will post the next phases as they continue to evolve.
I am really enjoying this collaboration with my son! Thanks, Joey! Hope you like your Christmas Present!!!
Love,
Mom
