Waiting by the window.

Waiting by the window.

This image started as a sketch. The idea of the illustration was an excited boy looking out the window and slowly falling to sleep. What is he looking for, may be an Alien? 

He starts in an upright position eager to see what might come out of the sky, then he gets bored, and finally we see him asleep. 

The two previous stages were going to be progressively fainter. You can see three faint rising moons in the sky to accompany the stages of the boy which was to depict the passage of time. Unfortunately the whole concept didn't quite translate in the final painting but this is where it started.

When working with human characters like this I like to use warm brown line work on the face and body. I feel the character  is then given a softer and more sensitive feel. 
I painted the base of the boys hair using traditional water colours. I like to add extra textual element to an image where every it lends it self.

The finished painting was looking confused with all the overlapping boy stages and moon in the sky so I needed to compromise. 
This is what I ended up with.