So, since working on Katie and Dave’s portrait a couple months ago, I have had the opportunity to work with some great subjects on a variety of portraits. I am telling you, I love this work. It is exactly what I have been wanting to do for years and I am excited for this to continue. I think I enjoy this even more than my life long goal of being an animator, if you can believe that. I am just crazy about the portrait as a genre in art. I think portraits can say more than any other type of work.

Here are the portraits I’ve done so far. And if you make it to the end of the post, you’ll also be able to see a process video, where I recorded my screen while creating a digital portrait.

Here’s Katie and Dave, who you may have already seen. Katie and Dave included this portrait in their wedding announcements for a unique approach. The response to this was very positive.

This is Abbie Breedt, who is one of Alma’s clients. Her sites will be launching soon, so expect to see a little more of her work soon.

The above portrait is of Megan, who is rather classically pretty. It was up to me what direction to go with this portrait, and it was suggested that Megan sort of resembled an ancient Greek look, and I agreed—either that or a Western European, Madame X kinda vibe, so I kept all that in mind when I styled the background and overall feel.

This portrait is of Jon and Dan Heder, yes THAT Jon Heder. They submitted a photo with this composition, and I loved the concept and the fun nature of the work. It was interesting to focus on the differences and similarities between these identical twin brothers as I worked on this portrait.

This last portrait is of Sarah, who is the wife of Dan Heder and whose great hair made the portrait even more fun. For a different approach, I decided to record my screen during this portrait to give you as much insight as possible into the process of digitally painting. I deviated from my standard process a little in doing this, since all of the portraits I do are done by pencil first, and then digitally painted or colored. But so that you could see the whole thing come together, I drew this one digitally (using my Wacom tablet) from start to finish.

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As I said, I really love doing this work. If you are interested in having a digital portrait done for yourself or as a gift for someone you know, send me an email at mike {at} ollibird [dot] com. My prices generally range from about $400 to $650 (lower for one person, higher for two, for example) but I can give you a quote on your specific project if you describe it to me. You may be interested to know that I release all rights to you to use this artwork both personally and commercially. I provide you with a web-ready version and a high-res print-ready version, and I can also ship prints of your portrait to you. (I don’t charge big prices for the prints—just enough to cover the cost of the print and shipping, and a little extra for my time in packaging everything up and sending it off to you.)

And in the meantime, keep checking our blog for updates on the next batch of portraits I’m working on.