The Art and Design of Damian K. Sheiles: Breaking Art > The process behind my Walter White Illustration

Every week on Facebook, OzComics has a no-prize draw-off competition. To commemorate the series finale of TV's Breaking Bad, the draw-off competition for that week was, you guessed it, any character from Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad to me is the the best show to ever grace our TV screens, the portrayal of Walter White by Bryan Cranston (a favourite actor of mine from his 7 years on Malcolm in the Middle) hit very close to the bone and I found myself often sympathising with his situation even long after I 'knew' I shouldn't be.

I decided that I would honour the show and Bryan Cranston in particular by producing an illustration of his character Walter White. The photos below showcase my art process from reference material, painting the jacket, applying water drips and ink splatters to scanning the art and digitising in Photoshop.

I hope you dig it!

My first attempt at the painted jacket with splatters and dripping ink run-off. The jacket on the right is the start of the second attempt with stronger focus on jacket shape, contour and shading. The final jacket will be scanned into Photoshop as a grayscale image at 300dpi.

The jacket was scanned into the computer at 2 different times. The above scan was after I had completed the initial painting stage - before the ink splatters and water drips were applied to the finished art.

Here's the above painted jacket complete with ink splatters and water drip run-off.

Light pencil sketch of Walter White (head & shoulders).

The above image shows the pencil sketch with minimal ink added, filling in the detail and adding depth to the face and neck. The final ink drawing (below) will be scanned in to Photoshop as a Black & White bitmap at 600dpi.

Completed inked version of Walter White (head & shoulders).

I scanned the head and the printed the black/white at a much smaller size so I could draw the lightning though lines emanating from the creases on Walter's facial skin. This would serve as a graphic element and directional tool in the final composition.