10,000 Facebook Fan winner Smokey101e’s custom Gamesville artwork!

So, back in July we were on the cusp of reaching 10,000 fans on our Facebook Page (we are now comfortably over 13,000 – thank you!). To mark this momentous occasion, we held a contest with the grand prize being a custom painting done by our resident artist nick.sherman, designed by the winner who happened to be Smokey101e. It took Nick some time to complete it (as he is always simultaneously working on 1000 different projects for Gamesville) but it was finished and sent! Smokey101e received the painting (framed and signed by all of us) but I think it’s time we shared how Nick created the work (and the final piece) with all of you.

Also, judging from this image here, you can see why *I* don’t do any of the illustration.

Step 1 – Get the proper supplies

Nick decided he wanted to do an ink and watercolor painting, so getting the supplies was the first step – paper that won’t wrinkle, good brushes, solid ink pens, and some nice watercolors! As you can see, our artist is all set and ready to go!

Step 2 – Sketch out the idea

After going through some thumbnail sketches, Nick settled on this idea and did a final sketch in pencil to help guide his ink. Nick works very cleanly and completely as you can see – the lines are very tight and he knows exactly how it’s going to look.

Step 3 – Ink that sucka!

So here is the cleaned up and inked image. This provides a solid foundation to lay down the color. Since he’s using watercolor they won’t cover the ink lines unlike acrylic, guache, or oil. All the pencil has been erased and, since this was scanned rather than photographed, we couldn’t get the texture of the paper in, but you get the idea.

Step 4 – Profit…er…color it!

And wow! The final piece is done and looks amazing! I hope Smokey101e loves her unique, one-of-a-kind prize as much as Nick loved making it. Who thinks this process might be a nice prize for the future (I can picture Nick having a heart attack at doing a mass run of these paintings once he reads this post)?