Ringtail

Commissioned portrait of Nauta's character, Sethrik the ringtail cat. As you can see, he is skilled in martial arts, and is shown here practicing a kata. (In-character, he calls this art "Sprung Monkey.")

Process:
Gathered reference photos of ringtails and martial artists. The pose this is based on came from a 1" b&w photo. (The pain.) I drew this using #1 and #2 pencils on paper. Scanned it in. Colored it in Photoshop, which involved about fourteen layers. Worktime stretched from November 2003 to March 2004, although the painting itself was made in occasional fits and starts. I found that listening to a radio play while I painted was best for my concentration.

Note that the image I actually gave the commissioner was a 1650x1650 high-quality TIFF file. The version I've uploaded here is much smaller so you won't have to wait for so long for it to load; the closeup of his face in the lower-right corner shows what it's like at full size. Neither the face closeup nor the oversized signature are in the commissioner's original.