You learn by doing and that means fucking up. Once the drawings were done, I began to water color them. During this stage, I was becoming very antsy and wanted to see the finished product before I was anywhere near done, so I rushed myself. Thus creating the blotted mess you see below.
Luckily I had scanned the originals into my computer as a fail-safe in the event that such an incident might occur. But during the process, I realized I wasn't happy with the portrait. Something about it was off. After a week or two of debating, I finally redrew it.
From here on out, I decided that water colors wasn't the way to go so I opted out for digital painting instead. In the end, it worked out so much better. A lot of time was spent figuring out skin tones for the girls and how to approach the details within their hair. Most of my time went into those details which really paid off in the end.
The last step, which should have been the first, was figuring out the background. Now, the way you're supposed to do this is you figured out your background first and then move your way to the foreground. I have never done this and I really should start doing this soon because on this project it was a major pain in the ass. I would saw a good 2 months was spent figuring this out. This stage should seriously take no more than a few hours, a couple days tops. But I'm an asshole. Sure enough though, I found what I wanted and the piece was complete. Charmaine and her cohorts (Agatha and Tarah) were finished and it was ready to be set upon the public like a flesh eating bacteria. I hope you ladies and gents enjoyed this little break down. If anyone has any questions on the process, feel free to shoot me a line. Take it easy!
-Davel
