Well, I’ve officially been married for 3 years. WOO-HOO! What you see below is one of the anniversary presents I gave to my beautiful wife Valerie. Cue the “AwwwWWwws” No more mushy stuff… on to the art!!! I did this with a combination of techniques. Traditional watercolor, Pen and Ink, and painting in photoshop with my trusting Wacom pen tablet. I wanted to do this piece completely traditional but it came down to a couple things.

When you’re painting someones likeness you have to be pretty dead on, a slip of the brush and suddenly your subject has a uni-brow and looks nothing like they’re suppose to. You counter this by working big so you have more room for detail. But this means more time, and time was not on my side. Besides, digital painting is cheaper, faster, less messy, and you can simply zoom in for you’re detail work. But like I said, I did do some of it traditional with the black lines being inked (of course) and the background being watercolor. You can’t really make it out, but in my original wash you can see some cool “sparkles” that I achieved by throwing some salt on my watercolor wash. It’s a cool trick to add some detail or texture to your piece. (because the salt absorbs the pigment) give it a try sometime. You can finally mix the culinary arts with your paintings! Also your painting becomes edible so even if the picture stinks at least it’ll be delicious