Discworld - Night Watch: Side by Side

Side by side version of:

Killing four birds with one stone. Yay!

- Paint Hugh Laurie. Check.
- Paint Zac Levi. Check.
- Paint Tricia Helfer. Check.
- Make a rendition to the Anhk-Morpork's Night Watch. (Terry Prattchet's Discworld). Check.

I'm not really sure when i had the idea of "casting" Hugh Laurie (House MD) as Vimes for this painting but i'm very glad i did. One of my favorites TV actors acting as one of my favorite Discworld's characters. Cool.

For Angua I needed a beautiful woman who can be sexy and dangerous at the very same time. So I thought that Tricia Helfer (Galactica) could be a nice choice.

I know that choosing Zac Levi (Chuck) as Carrot can be a little odd at first. He's not redhead, he's not a very big dude (well, at least he's tall)…but man, that guy is awesome and i think he could act perfectly as Carrot.
If you only know Zac for his role as Chuck, just take a look to his twitter feed (@ZacharyLevi) and pay a visit to The Nerd Machine [link] with special attention to the NerdHQ panels videos from the last comic-con.

About the painting itself:

I started picking some photos of the cast from google. Then i did a rough composition
and traced their faces from the photos and I drew the clothes and props over it.

Once the lineart was "finished" i painted the values for each character (B&W) using mostly round hard brushes. Finally i added color and overlay layers over the values. What i like the most about this technique is that you can try different color schemes over the same subject untill you find one that really fits.

I had serious troubles to find a background (as usual) so I finally used a blurry bg with the glowing eyes (a monster!!) and the rain. I love the rain effect, I think that brings a lot of life to the final result..and it wasn't hard to do!!

Well, i'm quite happy with the outcome, even when i know that the resemblance of Tricia's portrait is far from perfect, but it was freaking fun working on the whole painting.

Hope you like it too!

Any comment, fave or watch will be reaaaally appreciated!

Resources
References:
Hugh Laurie: [link]
Zac Levi: [link]
Tricia Helfer: [link]
City Watch Badge: [link]

Font "Crown Title" by Jonathan Paterson [link]


PS: If you wonder who tries to smoke a cigar on a rainy day like that?? Vimes does!