Deadman's Party Part 1

Hello! Later this year I will be participating in a group show at the Pony Club Gallery in Portland. The theme is "Deadman's Party". Today I thought I would show a little of what I have been working on. For this show I decided that I would be fun to do one solid painting with a bunch of content, and a small portrait that matches the larger painting. Here are some work in progress shots! Below are some thumbnails. At this point, I am just playing around, trying to work out my concept and playing with ideas and shapes and characters and narratives. I think I did this at a coffee shop.  

Having settled on a main character, I have decided to do a couple larger thumbnails. I thought it would be nice to have the guy sitting, so I chose the lower of the two pictured below. From here I gathered a bunch of reference material, and worked on a master sketch.

 The is below is just for fun. I drew this a couple mornings ago.

And this is a really crappy photo of my sketch for the larger of the two paintings. At this point I am actually halfway finished with the painting. Hopefully I will finish it next week! Cheers!