Heroes-Con 2017 Auction 20" x 32" process

Each year HEROES Con has an art auction on Saturday night.
The proceeds go to help fund next year's HEROES CON, which is one of the last remaining independently owned comic-centric conventions. Shelton Drum & Co. Do a fantastic job of making everyone (exhibitors & attendees alike) feel at home & welcome. Some folks do their piece for the art auction up on a live art-stage at the convention (where attendees can watch the process). I prefer to do my piece at home in the studio where I can take more time, assure a level of quality, and not take away any table time for fans at the convention. For today's blogpost, I'll be sharing my process from start to finish:

Pencil sketches on copy paper of Saxon, Rand, & Kenzie. I then scanned these and arranged them into a composition on a mossy tree branch in Photoshop...

The layout is too big to print, so I break it up into single copy paper sheet segments and print those. The grid is to help align & register the 9 pieces of paper back into one image.

Close-up of the printed layout.

The final painting will be on mat board, so to transfer the drawing to mat board, I start rubbing graphite all over the back side of the taped together layout...

Mostly I just go over where all my drawn lines are, but there are so many close lines, tik marks, etc, that I end up coating most of the paper.

Here is the paper coated and ready for transfer. It's a messy job.

I then tape the layout down to the matboard and then trace over my drawing with a ball-point pen. Wherever I applied pressure the graphite on the back transfers off onto the mat board. This part is tedious.

Here is the mat board with a successful transfer!

I then started applying the lightest washes to the largest areas with watercolor.

First washes done.

Went into the mossy greens next....

Then the pale fiddly fleshy subtle bits of mouse skin...

and more mouse skin...

Then time to cover some larger ground with the fur.

Saxon & Rand's fur built up a bit.

All mouse fur done with the tree branch filled in.

Cloaks were next...

Primary color patrol cloaks blocked in with some rendering.

With a smaller brush I painted in the border detail.

Weapons, and small misc completed means that the painting part of this piece is done!

Here is my watercolor try at the end of the process (the watercolor tubes are a hodgepodge, but mostly Windsor Newtons)

I feel like my watercolor work doesn't stand well on its own without a strong line. Instead of using ink (which would be too stark & bold) I "inked" the drawing with a dark brown color pencil.