Painting Drama 1: Audacious Accomplishment Painting 1 Completed

Other the past several months I have been taking this amazing online course through the Chris Oatley academy of art. Our final project for the course is for us to redesign 2 scenes from a movie of our choice. After a bit of searching I decided to redesign two scenes from "The Grey" starring Liam Neeson into a space scene.
You can click on this link for the movie description. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1601913/?ref_=sr_5

1. Background:
The movie centers around a man (Neeson) who crash lands in the wilderness along with a plane full of prison inmates. Along the way the men are pursued by wolves and fight nature as they try to survive.
In the film Neeson finds a letter from his his in the crash, which continues to be an object of hope and inspiration through the film. So I wanted to include this in my piece.

Below is a basic summary of my process that I used to get to the final image along with a few notes along the way. I hope you enjoy:

2. Sketching/Ideas:
In all I would say that I sketched over a 100+ ideas before I narrowed it down. You can see some of those sketches here:

Full list of sketches:
http://murdockink.blogspot.com/2013/05/full-list-of-aa-sletches_10.html

Final list of sketches:
http://murdockink.blogspot.com/2013/07/final-list-of-audacious-accomplishment.html


Below are the initial sketches for my idea. I wanted to focus on the crash the expression of the character and the sense of sadness/despair.

After the last sketch I realized that I didn't like it, so I kept going. I finally came up with a different idea that was not as boring and that captured the sense of the scene the way that I wanted.

3. Beginning the final work: 
From here I kept going with the final work, below are screens of the process step by step. I reworked the drawing a bit in places until I came up with the final line drawing below.

4. Final painting process:
Color comp:

Final steps:

5. Final Version 1:

I came up with the final version below, BUT I was not happy with the face. So....

I went back and did a few studies and reworked it a bit:

...but I still wasn't happy with it. So I kept trying:

6. FINAL:
Here is the final: I feel the expression reads a lot better in this version, and the hair and the hair is a lot better as well, and he looks less like a mannequin. Once done, I put it away for a few days and then came back to it, and realized that I was pretty happy with the way it came out.

7. References, Brushes, Color Palettes:
Here are some extras. Images that I used for reference, color palettes and brushes.

8. In conclusion:
Let me say that this class has been one of the best experiences that I have had, not only in approaching my art work, but also in how I think about my ideas and design to the work. Instead of just rushing to throw stuff down, I took a really long time to go through the lessons that Chris has put together and to think critically. I have never worked so hard on anything as much as this one until I took this class, and I am so glad that I did.  One down, one more to go. I plan on finishing the second panting before the end of the year.

A big THANK YOU to the group for the support to one another and the inspiration.

m~

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