Here's the finished product! I added the gold background to give it a rich feeling, but I also have the white finished version that I will print.
I really love this piece. It took almost a month to complete but all the time was well worth it. I really pushed myself for this to turn out well and I learned so much.

Almost done! I added more and got the dreds where I would like them. I will go back and tweak some of the tattoos that are becoming lost next time I work on it.

Here is the update. I am getting frustrated with how to organize these dreds to look good! I've been playing with the size of my strokes but definitely am thinking about going back to just one same and just add texture.

Well here's a start! I went and created 2-D forms of his tattoos and started some dreds. I feel like there needs to be more as well as a few more tattoos. I will also move on to texture in the hat as well.

Here is the start to my Lil Wayne project. I started out using a gradient mesh to create his face. It is a lot of playing around with the anchors and tones. The biggest thing that I found was to actually sculpt the face as I lay down the gradient mesh points. Once you get the basic structure, for the most part the rest usually follow in accurately. I really am excited about this project. My plan is to make his dreds come out of his hat and then turn into two-dimensional forms to give the piece a different twist.

Here is a painting I did in Illustrator. It is Vermeer's 'Girl with the Pearl Earring'. I played around with the opacity of my brush strokes and the control of my strokes as well. I used suggestive drawing for the texture as well as the shadows and wrinkles in the cloth.

This is composition I did in Photoshop as well. I really got a sense of how to set up a shoot as well as thinking about the final product.
I feel like I got more into my style with this one. I like Grey and White and Black midtones and then one color to stand out. The red really helps this piece a lot.