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Sketch to final I thought it may be nifty to show the what I send my clients for sketches and then how the final painting evolves from there. The image below is for the Baltimore Sun, who's hired me to illustrate a weekly column in their Sunday supplement. This story was about a mom who wrote in talking about the benefits of a pacifier... how her baby is a mess without it.

I sent along two sketches for the art director to choose from. This is the one they chose:

After a client chooses a sketch, I always do a rough color comp on the computer, so the painting is easier and I'm not guessing what I want it to look like. It's easy to switch out colors and try different palettes in photoshop. The client never sees this, it's just for my own use. I figure, the client is working with me because they like my style and they know that they will get a finished illustration that will look like the rest of my work. So here is what the color comp stage looks like:

And this is how the final turned out:

You can see that I stick pretty closely to the color comp, although, there may be some shifts. In the painting I switched the background on the left from orange to red (it made the upset baby's head stand out more) and I added little details like stripes to his jammies. The right side ended up being a little heavier as far as color... in the painting stage it felt too light compared to the "warm" side.

They were happy with it. I liked it too.