Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Henry Ward Beecher

Anyone who looks through my portfolio, or blog, will see that I create virtually all of my finished illustration work digitally. I may start with a rough pencil, or a scanned in sketch, but from there it’s all pixel pushing. I love the speed and “undo” abilities of working via the computer, and what client doesn’t prefer, if not outright require, the final art be submitted as digital files? But for me digital art, despite all the pluses, (and I would argue validity as real art- here), will never totally replace the experience of traditional painting. My Wacom Cintiq’s pressure sensitive screen used with Painter’s virtual version of a traditional media stockpile is fantastic, but it can’t replace the tactile sensation of the real thing. With that in mind, I decided to go caveman, and created the painting above, “The Sentinel,” with acrylics on watercolor board.

My idea was to create a painting that had a certain brooding quality and yet employed some extremely bright color as opposed to a completely funereal pallet. Whether or not the raven is celebrating, the clouds are breaking, and the sun will soon shine again, or he’s sounding the alarm as foreshadowing darkness closes in, I’ll let viewer’s decide.