One of my favorites pieces at last weekend’s In The Trees exhibit was definitely Scott Campbell’s Concentrating On The J’s painting, based on the Tibetan rock throwing scene. The little “easter egg” in the trees is simply brilliant.
On his blog, Scott gives us insight in the entire process of making his wonderful painting that didn’t take long to be sold. From watching lots of clips and gathering images online as preparation, over scanning his doodles of characters and elements and composing everything in Photoshop, to mix an alizarin and burnt sienna color for his linework.
Some of his steps:
i like to start painting back to front, starting with the background sky because it gives it the basic color mood and makes me feel like i just accomplished a lot of painting. even if it is just a color wash.
i dont stay in the lines as you can see. i’m pretty sloppy at this stage. it’s ok because the lines will make everything tighter later anyway. but my paintings are never super tight as it is. it’s how i do things, you guys.
now that the background colors are all done, i get to do the character and object colors. an enjoyable part. i paint the little dude in the tree like a little cherry. (i know he’s not in this scene in the show. but there he is in this painting anyway.)
And here is the finished painting in its fully glory, “like a magical spell”:
Check out more of Scott’s amazing work on his Flickr page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9kejvxRokg
Fire walk with 
