Philbert in the Clouds

4/11/13- I almost missed my submission-of-the-week this week LOL, so here's a sampling of what I'm doing. I haven't done a Philbert in a while, and I'm going to render this in one of my more painterly styles. The fur will be a challenge but will look awesome if it's pulled off.

The bears in the background are going to look at him weird- the whole point is to show who he is, and why he appears to hang out with Norm and Cory and basically all the other miniature creatures, because I'm intrigued by that. Almost all the main characters in the story are black sheep, but I think Philbert is more of a literal black sheep, being from a herd.

I am thinking of having some of the birds doing different things, as well as playing with the layout. Maybe his mouth should take up more of the frame.

Philbert is a character from my comic Norm & Cory (C) Moi, which can be read in my gallery.

EDIT: 4/18/09- I am trying the same kind of process I did with that painting of Lark, since I'm very proud of how that turned out: blocking out the shapes in a vector program, and then later, painting all the details in a bitmap program (Photoshop and Corel Painter). This way, I realized I can preserve whatever hard, solid edges I can and still add the texture of the fur or feathers. I am still not sure about the color of the background, it may be because Philbert's main color isn't really that attractive to look at. Philbert's color, just from his nature of being a black bear, was challenging even from the beginning.

EDIT 4/19/09- Okay it's DONE! I'm pleased with how this came out, yet I thought it would be finished tomorrow. Critiques are welcome.