Painting Gambino

For the longest time, I've been wanting to get into digital illustration. I've had the programs. I haven't worked in a while, so not having time really wasn't an excuse that could be used as to why I wasn't doing it. Or at least trying to learn how to do it properly. I mean, we've got YouTube at our fingertips with tons of people giving away free information that they've learned through their own personal processes. And low-key... I watch/listen to so much YouTube so I really didn't have an excuse!

After reading Jon Gordon's new book, The Garden, all about overcoming fear and anxiety, I was inspired to learn. I had a second wind kicked directly into my gut. I wasn't gonna let anything stop me.

The feelings of overcoming my fear and anxiety reminded me of an old Childish Gambino song, The Last off of his 2010 project, Culdesac (you can't stream Culdesac on any major platform but that kid plugged up the playlist with the OG tracks). In the talks about Tina Fey restoring confidence in him and his ability to actually rap. He even explains that he started to rap again because of her words and later down the road features her on his project, Royalty. So, after finding the project online and bumping Culdesac all the way through I was inspired to do my first illustration on Childish Gamino.

After an hour so of going through tutorials on YouTube, I found ChiWorld1234. He's an amazing digital painter who helps beginners by doing video tutorials on different digital illustrating techniques. He also does some paid work as well. I recommend checking him out if you're also looking to learn the beginning process or looking for inspiration. He's a great source.

Here's the final product. After creating the vector image of Gambino in Adobe Illustrator I brought it into Adobe Photoshop where I mocked up this poster. All in all the process probably took me 3.5-4hrs.