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.
The Final Digital Painting of the Nero Tiger Fantasy Art Commission approved by my client. With the artwork approved I then printed an archival 10 colour latex in canvas print and signed a limited edition certificate and numbered it 1 of 500 and sent it out to my happy customer. I also gave him access to high resolution files for this fantasy art commission so he could use it as a phone background and computer wall paper desktop. The canvas prints that I make are created in South Australia and are archival, 100% vegan and environmentally friendly, latex water based ink and are printed on a high end ten colour canvas printer to ensure a massive colour range.
Once I finished the digital painting and sent it to the client. I really wanted to re-create it as an original acrylic painting. It was also fun recreating it with acrylics as the texture of the paint strokes and details are very different to digital painting. I do sell many of my original paintings and if you do like any of my digital paintings I am more than happy to re-create the art as an acrylic original painting. You can purchase this original painting which is now framed and ready to ship here is the link to the original art: https://www.achristouart.com/store/nero-tigris-acrylic-on-canvas
Thank you for checking out this blog post and if you are interested in getting a commission like this feel free to reach out on my commissions contact page on my website. Feel free to reach out with a brief in mind. Please keep in mind I do sell canvas prints between $200-$300 AUD so I do not do any sort of fantasy art or art commissions below $200 AUD unless they are very small ink drawings. I usually don’t fire up my computer to paint or prepare my canvas for a minimum of $750 AUD for a basic character illustration. But feel free to reach out.
https://www.achristouart.com/commissions