Juliette Elizabeth announcement 2015 (Pete Hawley inspired)

I'm about to become a grandfather, again. Happily awaiting the arrival of a girl in a family full of boys and a little sister for a rambunctious spark of life known as Jacob.

The Dark Knight Rises (Bane chase scene)

Sketch on separate layer, loosely built up to provide enough framework to work off of.

New layer, set to 'multiply' so that I can see-through to my sketch work. I chose a neutral color which would act as the basis for my overall color palette. I like to find a mid tone that allows me to create light and dark tones from it.

Adding dark tones that don't conflict with the cool palette nor get too dark or lost. At this point I still need to visualize my sketch.

Focus on Batman now so I can see if my background needs to go darker or how strong my lights will be. When drawing an overly dark scene such as this it's amazing how much light you actually use to highlight or make items pop. In this case my lightest spots will be in the background, center right of frame.

Close-up of Batman and some of the early highlights that come about by only using darks. That's where starting with a mid tone can be beneficial.

I already know where my brightest lights will go but I need to see that the focal point of my composition won't lose depth.

Needed some more light here.

Here's the center right (detail) area where my brightest whites will be. There is no need to sweat the details on the car bodies. They will barely be noticed, and that's exactly how I want it.

Some detail of the grip guards on Batman's bat cycle. Lighting these can be tricky as they reflect their surroundings. Since this isn't a 3D CGI pic, I have to assume what that is. But really it's not much different from what's ahead of Batman already, minus the lights. Add 'noise' to the brush to create texture as you paint.

Beginning to balance the lighting with the addition of lights in the distance. A beginner mistake is to get overly excited about coloring Batman (the cool part of the image) and lose your steam or even level of detail and lighting by not spending the right amount of time on each aspect of your image.

Back to Batman and admire highlight and defining how he will form. 

Time to spend a few minutes near the face. Looks very simple and basic now but it's where people will look right away. Balance your workload when coloring something of this scope. Even though it doesn't look like there's a lot going on, the most basic background (while boring) contains significant info. This is what separates the pro's from the amateurs.

Working on highlights more than shadows, details more than shapes. At this point you're looking for contrast in the right places.

Back to center right where the car lights balance the composition and just wouldn't look right without the correct amount of lighting.

Some of my reference for Batman and his cycle are too dark for me to appreciate details (function and purpose), so here's where the artistic interpretation, without straying too far from your subject, comes in handy.

Detail of Batman.

The image is, right heavy. Meaning, after Batman everything is off to the right of the composition. While adding something significant to the left is not what I'm thinking, the right amount of lighting (street lights) can balance the composition just so.

With the exception of the sketch layer, this was all colored on a single layer.

Final screengrab.

The Dark Knight Rises (Bane chase scene)

This is a scene I recreated from the 3rd Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. As I've drawn it the shot does not exist, I've even taken some liberties with Batman's outfit. There are many scenes form this movie that I enjoyed but this one stands out as the one that gave me fanboy chills when I first saw it.
Digital painting © 2014 Oscar E. Alonso

#darkknightrises #batman #bane #batcycle

These were some of the images I used to reference my composition along with notes that detail why I selected them.