Lunar New Year 2018

For this year's Lunar New Year, I decided to paint an environment piece instead of a character design piece.

It's a personal annual project of mine to paint a piece in response to the Zodiac of that year. This year is the Year of the Dog. 

First, as my usual work flow, I sketched out a loose sketch before going through and defining what things were. 

After that, playing color, though for this piece, I made sure to use a lot of reds and yellows to keep a traditional Lunar New Year color palette. 

During the painting process, I decided the image should be flipped due to eye flow as well as how people read in the US (left to right). 

For this piece, I really wanted to work on my painting. The ground and textures around the painting, I wanted to define as well since I don't get to that point in paintings. I also wanted to differ the people as well to keep the piece realistic enough in the stylized art style.