Tribute to Davy Jones

As many people know by now, my favorite character of all time is Davy Jones from The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest and At Worlds End. I even have a movie replica of the Key to his Chest! Since the image I originally posted for this was way back in college, I figured I'd post it again up front. I hadn't changed the image since then, except for flipping it horizontally. 

I have not to this day spent so much time on one single piece of work. Davy Jones took me a cumulative 40+ hours of work. Studying over a dozen screenshots for colour reference, I painted over a sketch I had done. Even after all these years, I am blown away by this. I might even hazard to say I was entranced while painting, absorbed and transfixed to complete the perfect tribute to my favorite character. I still stare in wonder how I had pulled it off, but I had. Sub surface light scattering FTW!

Out of interest to study Davy a little more, I rendered this out in graphite over the course of a couple days. It taught me a lot about using values to show depth. I only hope that I may get so passionate and driven by my own characters that I may be able to render them in such detail. I have too many characters to know where to begin!

This concludes my Tribute to Davy Jones! Many thanks to Bill Nighy for breathing life into this incredible character! No one else would have been able to do him justice!

Up next I have completed an album cover for a great friend!