General Info: Second piece completed for my Independent Study class. I had a lot of ideas for this character before even starting on initial sketches. As he has been with me for several years, there is a lot for me to pull from when planning out an image featuring him. Unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword of sorts, as I ended up wasting a lot of time attempting to figure out what I wanted to do. After starting and pitching two other projects, and saving the third to complete on a later date, I decided to start fresh and go with a portrait painting. My goals were mainly to achieve at least a semi-realistic, full-color image of my character, practice digitally painting skin tones, and experiment with more muted hues. As much as I would have loved to go full-fledged photorealism on this piece, I feel I simply don’t have the experience to do so. Practice makes perfect I suppose, and I consider this piece a success in most rights even though it isn’t exactly what I wanted. The only reference I used for this piece was a mirror, in an attempt to match some of the lighting that I observed on my own skin. Technical Details: Programs used - Adobe Photoshop CS2 Time Taken - 30+ hours Completed September 24, 2007 Image, Character, etc. is © T. N. Barner 2007, All Rights Reserved