Character Portrait Painting

I have studied painting for a while, and it has always been in my wheelhouse, besides graphic design and photography. In fact, it was one of the core requirements for my Associate's degree in graphic design. So, in honor of that achievement, I decided to combine my painting skills with my love for pop culture and make paintings inspired by characters that you might have seen in movies and on TV.

Today, I am going to demonstrate how I do this Spider-Man painting.

First, I began by sketching out Spiderman's face on an 11x14 inch canvas. It looks a little sloppy, I know, because I was having trouble with the placement of Spiderman's eyes. However, when I start throwing on the color, it will really start to fall into place.

Then, I used some red straight from the tube to fill in the red part of Spiderman's face.

Then, I used black and white to work on the eyes of the mask.

For the shadowing on a few areas, I used a bit of a darker, burnt red, then used a bit of white, mixed with a tiny bit of red for the highlight on top of the mask.

Then, I dived back into my black to make the webbing all around the mask.

I finished off the painting by add a solid background so that the Spiderman face can pop out. I used an ultramarine blue mixed with some white to make a slightly lighter blue.

And that's all there it is to make this awesome Spiderman painting!

The other painting that I did right next to Spiderman is Minnie Mouse. I made these two paintings for my neighbor's kids, one of which was a birthday gift (for the daughter).

These make great gifts for any occasion, and also adds some pop to their bedroom. I will be making some more of these character portrait paintings in the future!