Bates Motel: An exercise

Today's piece was originally intended to be yesterday's piece. I wanted to have it up for Valentine's Day. But unfortunately, we got hit with Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse, which ever you prefer. I was away from home and just returned yesterday afternoon. I did try to get this done last night, but it didn't happen.

We have Netflix, and recently they added season one of the A&E series BATES MOTEL. I decided that I'd give it a go and found that I actually kind of liked it. I'm looking forward to season two, which begins next month. So as an 'exercise' I thought I would draw a BATES MOTEL spot illustration, featuring Freddie Highmore, who plays Norman Bates in the series. My ideas for it were to make it look like something that might run in an entertainment magazine and that I wanted to use a very limited color palette. AND keep it SIMPLE! Simple shapes and construction. Well, what was suppose to be a 3-4 hour project turned into a 8-10 hour project. It probably wouldn't have taken so long if knew exactly what I wanted to do with the background when I started working on it. And I spent a long time fussing over Highmore's likeness. ALSO, my computer crashed 3 times while I was working on this. Luckily, I'm a frequent saver. Even though I spent waaaay more time on this piece than intended, I'm very happy with the way it turned out.

So this is my Valentine's Day piece. A day late. Happy Valentine's  Day, if you're into that kind of thing. And Happy Birthday to Freddie Highmore, who's birthday was apparently yesterday as well.