PROCESS VIDEO // mushrooms - part 1 (Patreon)

I put together the process video for my Mushroom painting! It’s been a while since I posted the process of one of my character paintings, so I figured it was time!

Some facts:

• The video is sped up 200% - that’s twice as fast as the original speed.
• I have split it into three parts in total. This is the first of three!
• Here's the links to all the parts: PART 1 // PART 2 // PART 3
• The entire piece took me about 6 hours to paint, which was split up into shorter painting sessions.
• Wes Gardner’s gritty butter brush was crucial in allowing me to render this one. It has a nice texture to it that I think contributed to the organic feel! You can find it here: http://cbr.sh/kfv7sa?ref=loish

MY PROCESS

This is the part where I set up the rough version of the painting! As per my usual workflow, I start with a sketch and start adding base colors underneath. This painting is loosely based on a really old oekaki drawing I made in 2005, and you can see me pulling that up as reference around 6 minutes in. I wanted to keep the brownish hues from the original version, so that was my starting point for blocking in the colors!

In the initial stages of a painting, I’m usually keeping a lot of my layers separated because I’m still building up the basic ingredients. So I’ve got the character separated from the mushrooms, cloud, background, etc., and for each of those I also have the lines separated from the base color layer. I will only merge them together at a later point when I feel like the color scheme and basic concept has been locked down.

I want an organic and textured background, which I copy/paste from another piece of mine - the leyendecker inspired poppies painting. For generic backgrounds, I often copy/paste them from other works so I don't have to make them from scratch every time. I’ll just paint over it a bit to make it more consistent with the detail level in the painting I’m working on.

Around 31 minutes in, it’s time for me to start finalizing the piece a bit more. This is where I start merging some of the layers together to create more of a compact overview, and it’s where I start painting with the gritty butter brush. Basically I make the switch from building up the painting to rendering it!

Part 2 is coming up in a minute!