Spider-man + Venom Speed Painting

Spiderman vs Venom - Digital Painting

Spiderman vs Venom is a super fun digital painting done in roughly 4 hours. It all started with this idea of doing painting on Venom and Spiderman in a comical situation involving a breath mint which quickly evolved into Venom showing Spiderman a little lov’n. 

I began this painting by sketching both characters a few times until I was warmed up enough to formulate my composition. In my final sketch I made sure to fully flesh out the characters, which made the painting process unbelievably smooth. I used Photoshop and stuck to 2 brushes, the default soft round brush for everything except the background where I used a charcoal brush.

Memphis Comic Expo

September 13, 2014 come out to the Memphis Comic Expo held at the Agricenter from 10:00a – 7:00p. There will be awesome Cosplay, lots of Artists and more.

I will have prints available of some of my recent work, so come out and show your support!!

For more information visit: http://www.memphiscomicexpo.comhttp://www.memphiscomicexpo.com

Painting Storm

©2014 B. Lewis

 

A new challenge has presented itself forcing me to exercise complete creativity and control over what I paint and how I paint it. I have a little less than a month to try and create enough material to take to a comic expo this year and I’ve got plenty of mixed feelings about it. The main one is being fear. Will my work be good enough? Can I really pull this off? Well of course I can!!!!

When this opportunity presented itself, I was actually in the midst of another work, that’s coming along fantastically and while I was rendering some video footage for it, I decided to proceed with at least the sketch of my first “Comic Expo” piece. I decided to go with one of my favorite characters first: Storm.

©2014 B. Lewis - Storm Sketch

I had an image in mind and I decided to begin with the sketch and I stumbled across a photograph that captured exactly what I was going for which made some of the guess-work easier. Once I had my sketch complete, tailored to my version of Storm, I began blocking in color and layering highlights, mid-tones and shadows. I worked for a couple of hours and though it looked good, it wasn’t coming together as I’d hoped, so I tweaked what I had done and kept working, until finally I had my character. In total, I spent roughly 4 hours, give or take on this painting and I’m really happy with the end result (and I had plenty of moments where I wasn’t sure I was going to be). When I had gotten to the point where I knew I had done what I’d envisioned, it put a smile on my face and all the self doubt, melted down to this warm fuzzy feeling of confidence in myself and my work.

Trouble in Paradise - Painting "Just Us"

Roughly about a month ago, I was commissioned to do a portrait of a father and daughter. No problem, portraits is what I do best. I began this project super confident just doing a quick sketch, not really studying the subjects, because hey, this should be no problem right, I got this. I moved right to drawing on the canvas maybe 10 minutes after the sketch and began painting all in the same day. Everything was smooth sailing. I started with the father because I figured he would be the hardest so I wanted to get his portion of the painting taken care of and by the time I reached the daughter, everything should be good to go. In a breeze, I completed the father, I noticed that he was a slightly smaller in comparison to the scale of the reference photo but he looked awesome. Everything was working out great and soon I was working on the daughter. I started with what I considered to be the most challenging part of her portrait, which was her outreached hand, and that was done in a flash, now for the icing on the cake; the face. 

Original Canvas drawing ©2014 B. Lewis

I began painting the face in my usual sort way of laying down colors until I saw structures emerge. As I continued to paint, I noticed that something was terribly off about this portrait. The father looked great, the hand and dress were awesome, but the little girl’s face just didn’t match up, even taking into account one’s style in creating, this just didn’t look right. I kept toiling along, saying to myself, ‘just give it a little more time, it’ll all come together.’ In this case, for some odd reason that I still can’t figure out, it didn’t. Hours and hours poured into painting and repainting this little girl’s face and it didn’t look like her photo (not in a ‘this isn’t photo realistic kind of way) it looked like a completely different person.

12 hours into this painting, I decided to complete the background and see how it all looked as a unit. It was a well-painted portrait and I had a choice, say what the heck and turn in the portrait or attempt to correct this situation. The accuracy was so far off that I couldn’t present it to the client. My decision: Start from scratch.
 

Grid Sketch ©2014 B. Lewis

Grid on Canvas ©2014 B. Lewis

This time, I decided to draw this portrait using the grid system, which I used in the previous painting. In this way, I could capture the subjects much more accurately. 1 week later (in roughly 8 hours), I completed the portrait to my satisfaction.

Final Portrait "Just Us" ©2014 B. Lewis

So what was the trouble you ask? Why was this painting so much harder than ones before? I’ve pondered this question and have come to the realization that because I don’t practice as I should, don’t really keep a sketchbook, don’t paint as often as I should, I had a much harder time than, when I take my craft seriously and give it my all. The purpose of the B90x challenge was to eliminate the chances of something like this happening but I burnt out extremely fast with b90x, not totally sure why, but maybe setting smaller more attainable goals may work best for me. If it’s only setting aside an hour a day to practice, I think that’ll be beneficial to my art.

All in all, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome of this portrait. It really turned out nice and I learned a pretty valuable lesson: practice definitely makes perfect. So what’s next for BNZY? Well we’ll just have to see……^_^

In the mean time, check out the time lapse video of "Just Us":

Painting Alexander - Acrylic Portrait

"Alexander" ©2014 B. Lewis

Grid Sketch ©2014 B. Lewis

During a brief intermission from ink portraits, I was commissioned to do this wonderful portrait of a father and son. I was a bit nervous about this painting because the task involved enlarging an existing image and doing so accurately. Having a solid art foundation helped me overcome it (Thanks Mrs. Owens!!). Instead of free-handing the image, I found it best to create a grid. During the painting process there was still some tweaking that took place but all in all, being able to use the grid system to develop my under sketch worked like magic. The final product is a 16” x 20” Acrylic portrait and I’ve very happy about the outcome. I find that the more I paint or draw or do anything creative, the easier the next project becomes. Essentially, every project is practice for the next.

Drawing Harry Belafonte - B90x No.11

©2014 B. Lewis

In keeping with my recent enthusiasm with India Ink portraits, I drew (or painted?) a portrait of Harry Belafonte and I’m super excited about it. I’ve become very zealous in my pursuit to understand Ink as a medium and it seems that every subject I come across lately, I can see a really cool ink drawing being done of it and Harry Belafonte was no exception.

Final Portrait ©2014 B.Lewis

This drawing started off as a sketch; this time I decided to use my light table to draw the shape of Mr. Belafonte’s head and hand, and freehanded the details. I decided to experiment with exaggeration in this piece and elongated his neck, which in my opinion, enhances the mood of the drawing. After the sketch was completed I began to slowly build up washes on ink and the end result is fantastic. I’m very proud of this piece and look forward to doing many more. Have you accomplished something that you’re proud of? If so, let me know in the comments below. Check out the video below to watch me work.