Here are a few images showing my process through the final I Robot: Reason painting. In this specific case, I tried something a little different than my usual approach. I've started to have my pencil sketches scanned and printed directly onto canvas. This has saved me a good amount of time. I'm not having to transfer my final pencil sketch by hand. I previously would either use a sheet of graphite paper to hand trace the drawing or I would project the image onto the canvas and retrace. Either way was time consuming and I wouldn't get all the details that are in my final pencils. This new process saves me time and I have an exact copy of my drawing on the canvas. In this case, I had my digital value study printed onto the canvas. I'm not sure I will continue transferring the value study because I did lose some of the detail from the drawing.
Once I stretch my canvas onto a board I will apply a thin wash of color to give me a middle value base to work from. I still did the wash first even though I had the grey values on the canvas. I felt the surface needed an oil base so I did the wash with a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. I find this combination to give me a nice neutral base that I can shift cooler or warmer as needed. For this painting I added dioxazine purple to the washes. This is under the area of the light source. I placed the complementary color to try and activate the yellow paint by having some of the purple show through.
I have been trying to loosen up with my paint application. The difference is visible in this piece if you compare it to the Secret of Cavern's Keep or Cloudskimmer artwork. I have also started working on the main figure here before painting in the whole background. I'm hoping that by having the important elements with a full range of values that I will be able to soften up the values in the background on the less important elements.
This last image shows the finished painting still taped on the board. I will usually let the piece rest for a couple of days like this. I get the chance to review it and maybe add in some minor adjustments before pulling it off the board.