In my previous post I showed some progress work for a painting I have been working on recently. Today I’m happy to be reporting in with the final finished image!

Like most of my more narrative art, this painting was a blend of traditional and digital. For the digital work I relied heavily on Photoshop’s new mixer brushes. In these detail shots you can get a sense for the possibilities these new brushes offer for simulating the kind of handling one might expect from traditional brushwork. After several weeks work of man hours using these digital tools, I find them to still be far away from where many of us would ultimately like to see the input devices ultimately get to, but they are still quite rewarding to work with. Painting this piece was fun. I didn’t feel like I was fighting the brushes. Instead found that I was able to spend my energy trying to capture the emotion of the story.

I painted this image for my 2016 Sketchbook. (Which will be more than a sketchbook this time around!) These dwarves got themselves in a few other messes, and I hope to transcribe some those throughout the rest of this year.