Moving into new territories

Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains

Some of you may have noticed already but this piece is the first to have a white background. I already did a very dark picture of his bandmate, Layne Staley, who was always the stoned and depressed, Kurt Cobain-type rock star (he died of overdose). And of course, Cantrell was quite the opposite, well behaved onstage, sober during interviews, and no addiction problems whatsoever. So I settled on this picture with a light background despite it being slightly crap in quality. So I got my pen out and improvised and redefined some lines and cleaned up some blurs. Though I kinda screwed up the eyes a little...

...And none other than Jesus Petrucci himself

This picture was another challenge for me because of three reasons:

Firstly, this was the first not to have background objects ignored (as blurred and unidentifiable as they apear, they're actually stage/lighting equipments).

Secondly, this is the first one where you can tell where the subject is watching. On previous pictures, the shadow was too dominant so the eye sockets were entirely painted black. However on this one, I got the chance to have some whites in the eye.

And also, this is the first tile where I have actually used white - the highlights on Jesus's hair. Until this point I had only used black paint, so all the white surfaces were just unpainted canvas. Normally I'm not big fan of painting white due to the fact I can't be as carefree as when I'm using stronger colours but I think it turned out quite well in the end.