Barnabas Collins by Matt Combs

Hello everyone!!
Here’s my entry for the Dark Shadows contest….
I painted this in CS5 with my Wacom Cintiq. Its 100% hand painted -- start to finish. It’s done the same way as I would paint traditionally, just with digital tools.
This was done over a 5 day period. I worked on it and then made myself stop and look at it with fresh eyes. I didn’t want to over-look anything. I normally don’t spend this much time on a painting. This was different; I really wanted to spend a lot of time on this project.
Ideas…..
I wanted to create something dark/gothic looking that incorporates the character Barnabas. I really wanted to create a scene that I could see the character being in while still sticking to the dark/gothic look. I looked at different Dark Shadows movie images and came up with this composition.
How I went about it…
I wanted to approach this digital painting the same way I would airbrush something in color, on a metal panels but without the color. I wanted to stick to a black and white look. I started out with a black background. I started to build up the light areas first then the shadows last. It was a process of building up the highlights then toning it down with darker greys. I then reworked that area with white/light greys to build the highlights back up. I did this until it got it where I wanted it.
Here’s a link to the WIPs. I made them into a movie since I had a ton of jpegs saved out during the whole process. It will show you my workflow on how I went about this. I messed with the hand a bit to get them down better.
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Here’s a link to my gallery, check out my other stuff
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I’m really happy on how this came out. It was a lot of hard work but was so worth it in the end. I had a blast on this contest painting! I really hope this makes it to Tim Burton’s eyes. It would be a great feeling
Thanks again!