Where's Carl?

Hey everyone! Here's my new poster of Carl from "The Walking Dead". A big thanks to everyone that commented and gave their opinion as to which way I should go. Ultimately I went with number 19 as that's the one I was leaning towards and it seemed the one that the most people agreed on.

As I said before this is the first in a series of Walking Dead pieces that I'll be doing. As many of you know this is a departure from my usual "style" which is more comic book oriented. I really love the comic style but I also enjoy trying to push myself and do more realistic pieces as well. This is something that anyone can tell if you've seen my photostudies that I post on here from time to time.

If you're curious as to why I came up with the idea, I was greatly influenced by Marko Djurdjevic's work on the Magneto series around 6-7 years ago. He's one of my biggest influences and I really enjoyed his use of just black and white covers with the occasional splash of red.

With this piece in particular I knew that I wanted to do something with The Walking Dead but I didn't want it to look totally photo real. I wanted it to have a painterly aspect to it and also a little bit of a Drew Struzan influence as well. I also thought that the red and the black and white would give it a certain "graphic art" feel to it and would be something different than my normal work. In the end, it doesn't play as much into the graphic design elements that I originally thought it would but that's OK. It's not my area of strength and I still feel I achieved the overall feel that I was going for.

Also I can't help but bring up the fact that I find this extremely funny because in a post apocalyptic world the young kid Carl is always this close to getting killed lol! It's well known that they always ask "Where's Carl?" but I had to do it

As a final note, doing a piece like this is one of the many benefits that I have working on a freelance basis. I am not "shackled" to a style that my boss expects of me. I can experiment and I can delve into new "places" I couldn't have necessarily explored before. A big thank you goes out to my wife for believing in me and supporting me nearly two years ago to leave a studio and strike out on my own. It was the best career move I ever made and it wouldn't be possible without her support. Thanks babe I love you!

-Blake

P.S. I'll have progress shots up with some descriptions
in the next bit.