Poppies for a Cause

My sister every year organizes Coffeehouse for A Cure; a coffeehouse and raffle to raise money for the Children's Tumor Foundation (a cause very near to our hearts). Each year, I like to donate a painting to be raffled off to do my part in helping. Of course, I always decide to do things at the last minute, and so couldn't post a picture before the actual event. I did decide to document my process a bit with this project so you could see more how I work.

the thought process

First I started with a sketch in my sketchbook. This was quick, and unfinished, but I wanted to scan it in and do a color comp (yes I am impatient with that). The first row of the above picture is the original picture of the flowers I took a couple summers ago, the quick sketch and the quick color comp.
The second row is a cleaned up sketch that I did with tracing paper and pen, from there I got the color comps to the right. The gray background was a happy accident. I went to fill the background in Photoshop with a blue but had scanned the file as a grayscale file so it came out gray. I liked the way that looked against the orange so I kept it. I also decided to keep the grass in the background gray as well, simply outlined in white so that the flowers really popped. I was really happy with this as a color comp.

the painting process

After I had printed this out, I mixed my colors and got to work. For this piece I used gouache. Gouache and watercolor are my favorite media, and for this, since I was going for more of a graphic look, I decided to use gouache. Basically this is all the different stages of the painting.

the workspace. Pretty neat for me actually. and of course my coffee is always near.

the final painting (before I signed it)

Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of it when it was framed and looked all nice and pretty. I did scan it before I framed it, so I put a black frame around it in photoshop so you could get the idea of the final project.
I was really happy at the event because the painting seemed to get a lot of tickets, more money for The Children's Tumor Foundation!!! The winner was my younger sister's friend, who was ecstatic (she told me afterwards she was one of my biggest fans).
I love being able to share my talents to raise money for such a cause, and actually had a lot of people come up to me afterwards to say how much they loved it (always a good ego boost :) ).  I would love to be able to do this more in the future. But back to the drawing board. I hope not to leave this blog for as long this time without a post. Also need to get the much promised revised website up. Well, as an illustrator, your work never seems to be done.
Hope you enjoy the painting!