InProgresShots of Busts

So when I came back to my DA page after a busy year away doing contracts and saving orphans, the most recent comment on my page was from some guy saying, "I can't believe people pay money for these poorly photomanipulated anthro's labelled as paintings".

Any client of mine who's asked for a bust has usually seen the inprogress shots I take to make sure the character is turning out how they want. The added benefit of this is that I have inprogress shots of practically every bust I've ever painted for someone. Some of them only have 2-4 progress shots, if the painting went together especially quickly, some others can have as many as twelve. Since he specifically called me on anthro's I decided to pull out two of these inprogress banks for two of my favourite portraits.

For both paintings you can see I start out with the line art. I create the lineart after about an hour of looking at hundreds of pictures of the animal in question, familiarising myself with the structure and multiple view points. I then arrange a collection of my favourite photographs of the animal in question on my 2nd monitor. And glancing back and forth between multiple pictures, I create very messy lineart. Taking reference from the ear of one wolf, or the snout of another. Eyes are always a difficult point with animals, as you can see on that wolf painting. I don't nail the eyes until the final iteration. I then tidy the lineart, and send it off. Thats the 1st shot.

Once the lineart is done, More often than not I abandon the photo reference for awhile and focus on picking my pallete. Once thats done and I've taken the painting as far as I can, I go back to photo reference once again, and make sure to pay specific attention to the fur direction. This is a big thing, I have a brush that paints fur very very fast, but thats useless if I don't get the gradient and direction right. SO you guessed it, I Ref again. Usually the Ref for the fur direction is the same everytime, and it's a collection of frontal pictures of animals I have. Regardless of the camera angle for the specific painting I'm doing, The full frontals usually help the most.

Then it's down to the finishing touches. I'll be brutally honest here, if it's an animal I've never painted before, often times I find I've drawn far too heavily from a single photograph, and then have to make massive ammendments to put a humanesc expression on their face. This is my own failing as an artist in the planning stage, and mostly through total inexperience with a specific animal. I'm quite comfortable with Wolves and Tigers, after having done almost a dozen, but other animals cause me massive issues. Early on in my bust painting, I would draw from maybe 2-3 photographs only, and I dare say the work suffered as a result, being stiff and stagnant, but overtime I learned to take inspiration and take more chances freestyling without Ref, and the busts definitely became better as a result.

So theres my methods! These are paintings, and they take a massive deal of effort, time and concentration to pull off. My clients will always know this, because they get the banter and the inprogress shots themselves, but others won't be aware of it. Am I angry for the commenter saying I'm a photo-manipulator instead of a painter? Naw, I don't blame him, which is why I've stepped back from realism this past year. Too much reference and I find the creative juices don't flow as thick. Maybe one day I'll be able to paint portraits this realistic without a shred of referencing. But that will be a sad day.

I hope this has helped anyone else curious about my painting process. Or atleast my painting process from a year back, hehe.

New artwork coming sooooon.