Commissioned Portrait Extravaganza

Thought I would share a bit of my painting process with all of you out there in blog-world. I'm planning on continuing these to give you an extra peek of the steps from start to finish. Here's an example of a commissioned work I created many moons ago. Feast your eyes on the late night glory!...yes, I'm a night owl by nature.

It all starts with a final sketch...after TONS of other reject sketches. A huge amount of time is spent working with the layout and execution of the drawing before the paint even hits the palette.

Then some prep work.

No joke, the actual cat I was referencing had David Bowie eyes.

Vawah-la, the finished piece. This was an amazing piece to work on. The subject had such hypnotic eyes.

Got any painting stories or process pieces? Feel free to share them here!