Short Story 12 process

I went to work on this story immediately after the last one and it took quite a bit more research and work than I was expecting. The idea for it was a doodle I did over a year ago. The concept seemed simple enough, a Crew of Turntablists versus a Band. Simple, right?

Wrong, I poured through tons of photos of drum lines and DJ crews to get a vibe for the story poses, the sound of the colors, instruments, and the vibe. It took me quite a bit of just practicing unfamiliar poses to get down some I was proud of. After I got some solid poses down, I went to work on the background, which although is very faint took me a lot more time to paint. Again, looked up background, shadow, and perspective examples to help me craft something I could be proud of.

When i finally got the poses down it was time for me to position them and reposition them on the canvas to see what worked best. This took a lot of trial and error until i settled on a good position for them. Then came the task of painting the background and the characters in the foreground. Doing a combination of both is HUGE! It's like doing two paintings, and i hope I can do it twice as fast next time.