So this is a gesture I did - about 5 minutes I think.  The goal of gesture drawing is to quickly capture your subject while including as much detail as possible.  Figures are always difficult given the musculature and skeletal components.  This gesture, though, is pretty good I think.

Eagle Soldier, Final Rendering

My previous post included some process work for my new portrait painting, which I'm conceptualizing as an "Eagle Soldier" - someone who serves the Emperor's elite Eagle Guard.  These soldiers follow the Emperor's orders without question.

This portrait depicts the conflict that comes with being forced to follow orders.  My subject is, hopefully, imparting a sense of sadness and uncertainty over having been forced to burn a local village.  I painted the entire work in Adobe Photoshop CS5 and used some photo textures to make some certain areas pop.

Warrior Portrait

Following my battle mage image, I decided to paint freehand and come up with a completely new design.  So I started on this warrior profile image.  It has evolved over time (see below) but is still a work in progress.  Not quite finished with it but I feel like I'm on the right track.

Battle Mage

So it's been quite a while since my last post due to a full teaching schedule and some freelance that has occupied nearly all of my time.  Recently, though, I found an old sketch and decided to paint it in Photoshop.  I had painted it a while back but decided to start from scratch and just apply my new experience as a digital painter to it.  Below is the result.  I am very happy with how it turned out.  The overall painting took about two weeks.