Man….sorry about the long delay in posting! The life of man with a 2 year old that constantly tears your hand away from the mouse and keyboard(when it’s supposed to be his bedtime) is always challenging 
Today we are going to briefly talk about the process of creating a final rendering.
I am currently working on the 2nd series of Vintage Race Car paintings. I wanted to tackle this from a different perspective. That is ….to be able to create some really cool artwork in the form of a story. The difficulty for me is to make sure that each painting stands on its own without an explanation of what is happening in the story. Basically a snap shot of what is going on in that moment in time. Capturing the spirit and the emotion taking place.
For me…I always start off with creating quick sketches…either on a post it note (as seen in this video on post it note sketching) or a marker pad. All my sketches are just loose and dirty with no intention of making them perfect. Ideation is always important in this case as what you are doing is actually trying to tackle a problem….visually. So what does that mean? Well…any project you start has to have some purpose. What is my intent? What is the end goal? For me, my paintings should appeal to people on an emotional level. Part of that is understanding what it is people like and how to connect with them. That’s the first part. The second part is to figure out how to present the images. So you actually have a couple problems here.
To tackle the problem is to get all the ideas in your head down on paper. I sketch small because I can generate many ideas without investing too much time into it. See the sketch below
A quick sketch in markers should suffice just to plan out the different scenes….introducing a little before, during, and after the race. I can then scan the sketch in and start overlaying to color into the sketches using photoshop. This helps me to establish the “mood” or “tone” of the final rendering.
I love using warm tones for my final work. So I always explore a range of warm tones and pop them out with the highlights or areas that I want to focus on. After this, I refine the sketch a little more.
Prismacolor pencils are the brand of choice here due to the ability to get a wide range of values from a single pencil. Plus….they are waxed based and do not smudge. Photo references are a HUGE must for me. I have a reference folder in my hard drive where I keep gigs of photos that are all categorized from automobiles, nature, environment, people….you name it! The photo references allow me to add the detail and depth that I am looking for. Sometimes I use several photo references to create one detailed digital painting.
When all is said and done, you can end up with the finished digital painting below. However, creating this image in itself goes through another process of identifying the appropriate light source, focal points, compositional factors, etc… but I will save THAT for another post! Hope you enjoyed this and feel free to drop me a line and ask me questions!
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