3-4/29 Faces

I hate to start at the end, but once I post, this will be the thumbnail.
This image started as a stock photo image from a mailer I received. When I drew this and Face #4- Burt Reynolds in my sketchbook, I wanted to throw a watercolor wash, but I noticed the paper was already warped from a wash I did on the other side of the page. If I attempted it, the pigment would just pool in the valleys. So I scanned the page and isolated the pencil scratches.

See the dark waves across the paper? All the color was gonna pool there if I painted it.

I had no idea what I was doing in Photoshop. I've looked at a few Ctrl+Paint videos and sorta have the idea, but I have a LOT of practice ahead of me. I'm rather pleased with the results, but I also know it mostly works because of my understanding of value. My painting technique is pretty meh. LOL!

I just finished a Thing.

It was a small thing, a panel of a jam comic, but it became the Thing That Needed Doing for about 10 months. It was rather embarrassing since other people were waiting on it. When I sat down to actually work on it, it probably took me roughly two weeks all told. I decided to do the Thing in Manga Studio and in the process learned enough to get more comfortable with the interface.

When I finished the Thing late last night, I thought I'd be really happy and feel like a great weight has been lifted. But no, I felt dread instead. I tried to shrug it off and use the momentum of finishing one thing to tackle the next art Thing on my to-do list. But it was 1am, I was getting tired and ended up staring at the monitor for another hour.

Waking up the next day didn't really help. I then realized that I was fairly pleased with the how my panel came out and was concerned that I wouldn't be able to follow it up. Oh, so THAT's what "fear of success" is! But yeah, I gotta get over it and do the next thing. Having a dozen "meh" pieces of work for the world to see is much better than having an infinite number of "maybe some days..." in my head.

So as I look it over, it's not by any stretch amazing, but it is DONE. Since there are about 5 other panels to be done, I don't want to reveal the whole thing, but here's a sample. And if I remember, I'll put up a link to the whole thing later on...