I was proud to donate my fifth painting to a charity auction to benefit the fabulous Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, which I've been involved with the last several years. In past years I've submitted watercolor paintings, pencil drawings, etc. 

This year, artists were asked to submit works in specific categories. I chose the "homage" category, and decided to paint a Bugs Bunny / Indiana Jones mashup, as a tribute to legendary poster artist, Drew Struzan. 

Here's the final piece, which I'm extremely happy with. See below for a gallery and notes on the process. I'm debating making prints of this. What do you think?

All artists get the same 12" x 12" canvas to do with as they wish, in any medium. Here's my process, with work-in-progress shots below. 

1. First, I sketched everything out in Photoshop to get the composition down make sure it fit within the square.

2. Then in Photoshop I added some color to Bugs to try to match the color scheme of the reference photo (seen below is Drew Struzan's original Indy painting)

3. I printed the color study and sketch, and used a spray graphite on the back

4. I used that graphite to transfer the drawing right onto the canvas by tracing over it with a ballpoint pen. 

5. Then comes the main drawing details with black Prismacolor pencil

6. Once I was ready for airbrush, I used another printout of the sketch to cut out a mask to cover Bugs to prevent overspray. It's held on with a low-tack spray adhesive

7. Once the background was painting, I did the airbrushing over Bugs

8. Then I added colored pencil details and then highlights with acrylic paint.

9. After a spray of matte fixative, it was shipped off to California!