Superman Color Sketch

So I'm trying something new.  I have a fairly developed painting technique* established, and I'm now doing this digitally 'loose' painting style for actual jobs now.  Time to again bring these two  methods closer together.

I'm just now wrapping up work on the Road Warrior painting, and I ran into some finishing roadblocks.  In comping the piece together, and then doing the value study, I continually ignore the fill spaces, just thinking, 'oh, I'll add in some texture later.'  That is the lazy digital artist talking, with years of techniques built up to solve that problem.  The two year painter artist is not that good yet.  So, for me to avoid that issue again (which I should have, since it happened on the Oz piece as well.) I going to take the digital paint technique, and do a color comp for the whole piece.  I already have the drawings done, and it just needs to get transferred, so it won't hold anything up, as this can be done simultaneously.  And if you zoom in, you can see this rendering is very gestural, not nearly as detailed as other finished pieces.  Like I said, the drawing and details are done, this just is to service the color.

So the above image is a test (yes, I went back to the first version of Supes I did) to make sure it's something that would work.  On to the rest...

Now I need to get the rest of that stuff colored in!  The background/transition area is what I see a problem with, and something I previously would have ignored until I actually had to paint it, is the color treatment for the lower flare lines, the city, and how those would color theme with the Fortress of Solitude iconography.

Like I said before, I'm wrapping up the Road Warrior painting, which involves airbrush highlights, spatter, and final contrast looks.  But in between each paint app drying, I'd jump over to work on Superman.  For whatever reason, I noticed my hand, covered in paint, yet holding a digital pen, doing a digital tablet painting.

 
Two Worlds Colliding, indeed.

*I've meant to do a whole post about this, and now that will probably wait until I have several more pieces finished and try to do a show - this is where all the painting technique comes from, the DVD on painting Drew Struzan's Hellboy.  It is invaluable, and in many more ways than just the technical aspects of creating a painting.  More thoughts on the Master to come...