Today I want to show case to you all, my process of painting a fantasy art commission for a fan of mine from the past. The client wanted me to paint a tiger but to give it a fantasy element. He said he wanted it to be a water tiger, so I gave it a dolphin like tail. With fantasy art commissions I always collect photographic references first. I luckily had a few backgrounds of areas of New Zealand I had visited to get the lighting, mood and background that I wanted. I also collected many tiger photos to draw from to make this fantasy art commission as epic as possible. The background waterfall is from a waterfall area in the Abel Tasman in the south island of New Zealand. With all my references collected I start on developing the painting. I sent the client the rough colour and the background about 6-7 frames into the process below, to approve the artwork so I could complete it. Sometimes I do create a range of poses and layouts and send a options. The vision was very clear to me on this painting and it was all coming together very well. Also when pricing a fantasy art commission or painting I always get a brief from the client. The client wanted a digital painting and said he wanted a detailed character and background and I quoted them a price between $1500-2000 AUD. They agreed on about $1750 AUD and I proceeded to work with them.
Below are the step by step processes from penciling to basic colour and final details of how I created the fantasy art commission for my customer. This was so much joy to create as I love big cats and how gorgeous they are as animals. I titled the artwork “Nero Tiger”, as nero is the Greek word for water, it also kinda sounds like a Japanese word as I knew that the customer and fan loved anime and Japanese culture.