Grav Painting by mike_lavoie

This is one in a batch of older pencil illustrations I have decided to paint. None of these were originally created with the intention of being painted, but something about these pieces made me want to see them in color. My concern going into this one is I am not 100% certain of what I will be doing with the background. Will I add stars or nearby planets in the far distance? or just continue with a dark patch of relative nothingness?

The base or background layer serves as a means to unify the upper layers. I also am not much of a fan when it comes to painting on white.

Basic breakdown of the flats. Here I start going into some of the smaller areas like the glove and wrist of the spacesuit.

Finished flats. Flats don't always represent the final coloring but they make selecting and testing a lot easier. This also a rough test of the background. I've been trying to push light source lately, especially in bigger scenes. This is something that doesn't necessarily come into play as much with portraits and other character pieces which don't really need that strong of a background.

Added a lot of shading since the last update. I decided I didn't want to make the background go too crazy, but still wanted to have a few distant star clusters make an appearance. I'll be adjusting a few more areas on this before moving into the color blends and highlights.