I've been wanting to paint a self-portrait for a while now. I wanted to challenge myself a bit, so I gave myself a one hour deadline. Here's what I was able to accomplish once my time was up:

I had someone request seeing this image in it's original grayscale glory. So, here it is:

Painted this tonight in Photoshop. It took about three hours. Painted over a ballpoint pen sketch.

I've loved horror movies ever since I was a little kid. I remember staying up to all hours to watch the late night horror show. Very often those movies would star the late great Vincent Price. Here's my tribute to the man. I wanted to let the brush strokes show in this image in order to create the sort of look you'd see in an old movie poster from the 50s or 60s. This was rendered entirely in gray tones with color brushed in over that layer.

You know there are some people who resist being caricatured. Usually this is because they're too pretty or too normal looking. Luckily, North Korean President Kim Jong Il is exactly the opposite. This guy was born to be caricatured. The real question is, where do you start? There are the huge glasses and beady eyes. The weird, upturned nose. And, of course, the hair. It's like part brush cut, part Elvis do. Despite all the goofiness I had to work with, I still wanted to maintain some level of seriousness to this illustration to go with the serious nature of what has been going on in that part of the world. After rendering the entire image in gray tones, I overlaid it with a marble texture in Photoshop, which had the additional benefit of adding a few extra crags and pockmarks to his already terrible skin.

David Bowie is one of those artist who constantly reinvents his image and music from generation to generation. I chose a photo from his 80's Let's Dance era. The original photo was black and white, but I couldn't resist coloring those funky eyes. This was painted entirely in Photoshop, over a ballpoint pen sketch. I guess you can call it a speed painting since the whole thing only took about two hours. Honestly, when I was working on it I wasn't thinking about it in those terms. Every once in a while I just get in the zone and the work just flows smooth as silk. This was one of those times.