Finished Watercolor

I spent the day today watching a few movies and tackling the watercolor piece of Vincent from OilCan Drive. The definite highlight of the movies was the 1984 Kevin Bacon flick, Quicksiler, where he's a former stock broker who now rides bikes for a living. It made for some great background noise while I worked on this piece.

I painted Vincent in a very similar way to the techniques I used while working for Marvel Comics in the early 90s. Back before everything went digital they used to send me watercolor boards with the image printed on it in non-repo blue along with a transparent acetate overlay with the same image printed in black. You'd rip off the black line overlay and paint and airbrush on the watercolor board until you were done. Then you'd line up the transparent black overlay and, ta-dum, finished piece!

The only difference in this piece is that I didn't pull out the airbrush to paint and simply used ink washes, watercolor overlays, and colored pencils to paint the piece. When I was done I scanned the colored board into the computer, placed the original black and white line art over the piece, touched it up a bit, and, once again, ta-dum, finished piece!

Here is a photo I took in the middle of the process once the ink wash and watercolor part was done. I still hadn't used the colored pencils or touched it up yet but it should give you a good idea what the piece looks like without the black ink line overlay.

I really love doing pieces like this and I really should find the time to do them more than once or twice a year. It's different from painting digitally in that I am never quite sure where I am going with the piece and I don't have the luxury of having an undo button if something goes wrong. But, I always love the way these pieces come out. They have a life to them that digital always seems to be lacking.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new piece as much as I do. Question now is, who should I paint like this next?