The Shifletts' Ol' Scratch

Hey guys! Here’s a piece I just finished up on my birthday last week. I was commissioned to make a painting by the amazing fantasy sculpting duo, The Shiflett Brothers, of one of their original characters named Ol' Scratch.

If you don’t know who the Shifletts are, then you’re seriously missing out on some of the most powerful figurative sculpture that’s being made today. I shit you not. Go check out their site [link] and thank me later.

This is probably the coolest project I’ve ever been able to work on for so many reasons. Not only because The Shifletts were crazy enough to hire a bloke like me, but because I was given the task of capturing their dynamic 3D style into a 2D piece of art. Generally things work the other way around where a sculpture will be based off of a drawing or painting, but it was totally cool to be able to flip that convention on its ear. I kinda felt like one of those old school portrait artists who was commissioned to capture the likeness of a royal dictator. Too damn cool!

So anyway, Ol’ Scratch is part of a line of original character sculpts that the Shifletts have recently launched and this sculpture is already available as a resin kit and will eventually be turned into a bronze as well. In addition, this painting I did will be made available as a limited edition print exclusively at their site in the near future. I’m so totally stoked you can’t even believe! I’ll definitely keep you guys posted as to when they become available.

So for the technical stuff - This piece is 100% an acrylic painting done with all traditional brushwork on Strathmore cold press 500 series Bristol board. 11” x 16.5”.

I’ve posted an extensive tutorial about the making of this piece on The Shiflett Bros. forum at this [link] or here [link] . I tried to be as thorough as possible in explaining each step of the painting process so I hope it’s helpful to those of you interested in knowing how I make my work. Also if you have any questions regarding the tutorial, please register at the Shiflett forums and ask your question there in the tutorial thread, so we can keep all of the info and answers in one place. Thanks for looking everybody and I hope you all like this piece!

Ol’ Scratch character © The Shiflett Bros.
This image of old Scratch © The Shiflett Bros. & Walter O’Neal 2007