Dakota Johnson Portrait - Suspiria (2018)

I am a big fan of the new Suspiria film starring Dakota Johnson and I really wanted to try and paint a portrait of her.  Portraits are one of my weaknesses as an artist so this was certainly a challenge.  I first did a line drawing using a col-erase blue pencil.  The paper is coldpress watercolor paper and all the paint is transparent.  I only used five colors - primary cyan, permanent violet dark, dioxazine purple, alizarin crimson hue and primary yellow.  I don't think I nailed the likeness, but I still learned a lot painting it.

Page 21 and Page 22 Finished Illustrations

I finished both of these recently, forgot to post them here.  I am almost finished with all the interior pages - just four more to go!  After the interior pages are done, I have five more illustrations to complete which includes the covers, dedication and title page.  Almost done!  I hope to have most of my book completed before I begin teaching fall classes.  I want to have my kickstarter up and ready to go sometime this fall. 

Page 20 Finished Illustration

Painting this illustration was fairly simple, it was adjusting the scan that proved to be troublesome.  Pretty much all the colors had to be adjusted.  I did a lot of color balance adjustment layers and I managed to get the scan to match the original as close as possible.  The colors in the scan always seem to be slightly darker than the original.  Still, I am happy with the results.  When painting, I just treated the dragon as part of the background, almost as if I was painting a landscape.  The fox is the only area of the painting with absolute darks ( paynes grey ).

Pages 18 and 19 Finished Illustrations

This is my first double page spread!  It was a lot of fun to create but it also required a lot of thinking since it is such a complex composition.  It was a fun challenge.  Adjusting the colors of the scanned images took a few days since I had to do a lot of complicated layer masks.  It seems my scanner likes to cool down any and all warm colors so I had to adjust all the yellow greens, oranges and magentas.  I have 12 more pages to go and I hope to have most of it done by the end of summer!

Page 16 and 17 Finished Illustrations

 Here are the next two pages for my book.  Still moving at a steady pace, I should have pages 18 and 19 finished before the end of the school year.  Pages 18 and 19 are one illustration - a double page spread, so it should be fun to paint.

Page 15 Finished Illustration

This illustration was a lot of fun to paint!  All the colors are very cool in temperature which is very different from my previous illustrations.  I wanted to use cool colors in this illustration since it is a haunted house scene.  Normally painting with cool colors is a challenge for me because whenever I do, I have a tendency to go too dark in value.  Page 16 is a warm beach scene which will be a striking shift in temperature compared to this page.

Page 14 Finished Illustration

I finished page 14 tonight.  Had to make a lot of adjustments to the scan to make the colors match the original.  The painting is mostly transparent paint but the fire and lighting is almost completely opaque.  I am learning something new with each illustration I work on.  So far it is quite rewarding.  At this current pace, I hope to have at least five more illustrations finished before the school year ends.  I have adjusted my work schedule so that I am able to get some painting time in six days a week.  Fridays are devoted entirely to lesson planning.  Onto page 15!