A Digital Painting

Here's the finished piece (almost). I could probably spend another hour or so on it, but I didn't really know what I was getting into with this piece. It took long than I thought, and staring at a computer screen for hours on end gives me a new respect for graphic designers!

I just found out 3/1/10 that the little orange neighbor cat from my painting is gone missing :(

So sad.

So I added like 20 more layers, worked on the background features, tire, and ground, trying to keep it relatively loose, (although I did spend quite awhile on that tire detail)

I'm still a few hours away from being done.

So I've been laying down some underpainting layers, working mostly on the background, the fence proved to be more intricate than I first anticipated.

The key to making a digital painting work is making it look like it's not a digital painting. ..Easier said than done. But I was feeling particularly adventurous.

My neighbor's dog Elliot is the most adorable little old-man kinda dog, scraggly hair and wears knit sweaters. I decided to put him in my painting. As I shot photos of him in the back yard, some neighborhood cat, all orange and playful decided to get in on the fun and pranced around us. He actually let me place him in a strategic spot and I shot some more pics. He added a nice touch of color. I wanted to relay the sense I had of that crisp winter morning, the sun shining bright with not a cloud in the sky, animals enjoying the sunlight, without having to show the entire scene. I sketched out versions from various images I had and scanned it in to photoshop to start the tedious task of applying layers and layers of color.