It's from Sirius!

Wow- It's been so long! I'm ashamed to say that I've ignored my blog for over a year. I'll admit the simplicity of just snapping a picture for Instagram rather than scanning it at my computer is primarily the reason I've been so negligent. But with the upcoming new year I resolve to do better. I'd like to start with sharing this small painting I did for my daughter, a huge Harry Potter fan (ok, so are we, her parents). In fact, I've been away from blogging for so long that apparently I didn't even share the initial sketch, which I only decided to paint several months later. I did the sketch in about 15 minutes, with a light grey Prismacolor Marker for the rough drawing and a Pentel brush pen for the black lines. A few months later, as her birthday approached, I thought I decided to flesh it out into a full painting. As you can see it's basically the same but with many subtle changes. Check out the video below to see how I refined the sketch in Photoshop before painting.

 If you compare the two versions, you can see some subtle differences. I refined the likeness a lot, and improved on the pose, hand positions, etc...

Here's the final painting. If you'd like to see a quick progression, showing the Photoshop refinements to the sketch, here's a short progression video.