Joker - A sort of "Step-by Step"

I am wrapping up a Joker piece that's been underway for a few days now and thought I'd share.

Here's the stats on the project:

 - Two 12"x12" stretched canvases so in actuality the piece is a little bigger than 12" wide by 24" tall.
- Acrylic paint, semi-gloss finish.
- For Sale

 First, a sketch in my sketchbook. Was originally going to do 3 panels but realized a third panel of all hair and forehead was silly talk. Plus, while I like unusually shaped and composed pieces, I felt 12"x36" was a bit much. So two panels... I sketched it onto the two canvases... and we're off! 

 

I strayed a little bit from my usual routine at this point. Normally I'd Gesso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesso) with a white or black (usually black) and cover these puppies completely but for this I opted to simply do an outline and the small portion of background black. In part my reasoning was that I knew most of the left half of the piece was going to be white/gray, so it would be counterproductive to go all black, per my norm... On many levels I actually like the black and white image better than the finished version with color but wanted to add a little color to it... So I did....

From here it's all color. Just a dab of red for the lips and 2 shades of green in the little bit of coat at the bottom as well as a little in the hair, although the hair is hard to see in these photos. 

Then I went back and threw in a gray-tone shadow here and there as well as some gray skin creases and finished it off with some white highlights, primarily in the eye and hair. 

Now everything is drying and I'll do some final touch-ups which will basically entail cleaning up some of the lines and small details, as well as cleaning up some of the gray shadowing. 

That's pretty much it. A fun little piece to do and wasn't all that time-consuming. After several months of not doing much art-related due to the move, it was a nice way to get back into the swing of things...

On to the next one!

Kevin