Bigfoot Coffee Break Final

Utilizing colored pencils I fix up my coffee steam and add some finishing touches to the hands and feet. This is the point were one could tinker with it endlessly and it is important to know when to call it a day.

Finishing touches

Here I am expanding beyond the drawn image and adding more leaves and foliage, I had originally intended to add only some painterly touches and finish off the piece with some thick black lines in my standard cartoony fashion. I started to enjoy the overall painterly quality and decided to make it more like a real painting. 6 hours in and I have no idea what to do with the coffee cup.I have decided to tie in the cup with the Bigfoot's eye and make them similar, I lifted the cups decoration from a standard New York paper coffee cup, and attempted to add a steam effect that is not quite getting it done. This is the point were painting in photo shop seems like a much more convenient process.

Bigfoot's coffe break real live painting

With all of my initial colors laid in I can now start the fun part. Now I switch to gouache paints a completly opaque watercolor to start adding details. here I have begun with the big feat, my version has very pink flesh to contrast with the background so I am not messing with real flesh tones. At this point I am about 2 hours into the project. 3 hours in and I am building up shadows and working on contrast between different shapes. As you can see I am working on my kitchen table so I can keep an eye on my 2 year old and watch Parks and Recreation on Netflix. Much of the work here was done with my daughter sitting in my lap poking her fingures in my ears, much like this blog. You can see that now my wallet is sitting nearby on the table which means I have finally gotten tired of sitting on it.

Bigfoot's coffee break initial colors

I start laying in all of my initial colors, this is where I figure out my overall color scheme. I use liquid watercolor for this, I don't have to mess around with thinning tube colors and can work quicker. The liquid watercolors are more vibrant than inks and remain slightly workable after application.

Bigfoot's coffee break pencils

I pencil directly onto my WC paper without any initial sketching. This is by no means a recommendation. Any person who can carefully work out what they're going to do ahead of time is much better off. I tend to feel that the more I work on a picture before the final product, I lose a great deal of passion for the final painting. I try to avoid over thinking too much. This generally results in a fresher more inspired product, and occasional frustration and head scratching.