Sweetums the Barbarian 2

I'm continuing to work on this piece, it's taking a long time but there's no deadline on a personal piece so no worries.  Just trying to keep the detail consistent throughout, trying to decide how much detail it really needs...when you can work on the computer you can zoom in so far that you can draw details that won't even show up, and most people won't see.
So how much shine needs to be in the girls' jewelry?  How much stuffing needs to be coming out of Kermit's head?  How much texture do I put on Gonzo's skull?  These are the pressing questions this piece brings up!

Vector "King Sweetums"

A few months ago I had a painting in an art show, the theme of which was "The Muppets", and I attempted to draw the monster Sweetums as a Frazetta-Conan-type barbarian, complete with topless slave girls.  Well, I did it using ink, watercolor, and colored pencils, but it didn't turn out as nice as I'd hoped.  I thought it would be a nice break to go back to traditional analog media, but it wasn't.  It just reminded me how out of practice I am, and how unforgiving those techniques can be!

So I'm taking the drawing, for my own experience and enjoyment, and re-creating it in Illustrator, my daily medium.  I am starting to be convinced that while I can pine away for "traditional" painting, I just don't do it anymore!  I am learning to like what I get from vectors, the clean lines and everything is editable, and of course the undo keystroke alone is worth going digital.

So this time around...I'm a lot faster in vector, and there's also no show deadline this time, so I can really develop some detail, the real trick here will be finding the right balance, and not over-doing one section and then having to remove elements or bring everything else up to the same level.  Right now I'm just blocking things in and trying not to isolate colors but have things be consistent throughout by holding to a tight palette of (mostly) of warm tones.  I actually like the flat, graphic nature of vector art, so I'm not too concerned with a lot of gradients, blends, feathering, stuff like that.  (I guess I'm a dinosaur in the Illustrator world who learned to like what it could do before transparency was an option! and I'm okay with that.)

So I'd like to post a few articles on my progress with this piece.  The original watercolor, and it's development, is here if you care to compare: "King Sweetums"

At the Dark End of the Street....

One of my personal musical favorites...there's more to this soul brother than "When A Man Loves a Woman."

His Kermit-the-frog-styled dulcet tones, songs of love and loss, got me and a friend through many late nights of work...

Thought he deserved some street-art stencil-type appreciation.  

Achieve total Percification!

T-shirts in action!

I created a t-shirt design for our trip to Thailand to visit the House of Love orphanage this year.  I was very pleased with the image (you can see some preliminary and final art here) and it was well-received by everyone over there, too!  Here's a few of my friends modeling the shirts...

Bigfoot Vector Portrait