Bringing a painting back from the dead

I recently got an assignment to do a personal project for my senior studio class. The only requirement is that I enter it into the Society of Illustrators student competition. I brought a few sketches in to class to pitch my ideas. In addition to the sketches, I also showed a drawing of a painting I started almost a year ago for another class.

The original assignment was to illustrate an oxymoron, I picked civil war and walking dead. Instead of just making my painting about one zombie and one soldier, as always, I got waaaaay to ambitious. I bit off way more than I could chew (that is not a zombie joke). The painting ended up having 18 figures, I did not have the skill or confidence to tackle something like that. Fortunately, that little thing called learning happens to me occasionally.

So fast forward, my instructors picked the old painting over the other ideas I had. So I'm back at it. I'm still a little afraid, but I just try to imagine how the guys in the painting must be feeling to keep things in perspective.

Here is a process shot of where I'm at so far. This is about 20-30 hours into the project. That isn't painting time however. Currently I'm in the process of working through all the values, which has been about 4 hours of painting. Most of the time thus far has been working through the concept, composition, research, and photos. Everything up to the beginning of the painting was completed last year when I initially started the piece.

Hopefully this serves as a teaser and everyone is as excited to see the final piece as I am. When I'm finished I will be writing a detailed post on the process behind this disaster.

Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.