The Queen of the Lion is my take on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, The Singing, Springing Lark. It is an enchanting german tale of strength, love, and loyalty.
Let me take you through my process!
After I have my ideas sketched out to my satisfaction, I start with a number of compositional drawings, to refine the final details. In order to do this, I draw at full size, then layer tracing paper on top of it, and make refinements, and sketch ideas. This allows me to try different things without destroying the underlying sketch.
After I have my drawing finished to my satisfaction (though here you see it in one of it’s earlier stages), I will scan it and take it into either Photoshop or ProCreate to create value and color studies.
There were a number of different renditions, but these are the final value and color studies that I chose. You can see that they are very rough. By painting very quickly and with a broad brush, either digitally or physically, I am able to blitz through a number of different color and value experiments before discovering the one that I feel tells the story best.
I then transfer my drawing to canvas, as you see here. This is a great time to have something going on in the background, because it can be time consuming, and doesn’t require much brain power.
Then I begin to paint!
When using oil paints, I paint from the back to the front, meaning that I paint the backgrounds first, the the mid-ground, then foreground, and at last the surface details. I have my color and value studies off to the side so that I can refer back to them, as well as my model photographs, and other such references.
After the painting dries, I take it to someone to have it professionally captured, because, unfortunately, my own photography skills are somewhat lacking. If I need to, I take that in to photoshop to remove any dust or scratches that may have showed up in the final capture.
Then, Ta Da! The final product!
I hope you enjoy it!