I am now finishing up my newest project, and just wanted to show how I arrived at the final piece.  I will post the finish within the next few days!

For the first step, I play around on Adobe Illustrator until I find a font I’d like to use for my idea.  I generally start here, then print out multiple copies of my ideas in a light grey so I can sketch over the type and add to it.  

During step two, I experiment.  This is the real sketch stage, and I try different things with the layout I made.  For this project, I had a pretty clear idea what I wanted to do, so the sketch stage was useful to map out where to put everything.  This sketch is then scanned into the computer and printed out full size for transferring.

Step three, which is a clearly huge jump in the photos, is the first pass with paint.  I paint pretty fast so I did this in one evening.  The board** was prepped with a mixture of gesso, matte medium, water, and a little color.  Typically I would keep the gesso white, but I knew I wanted a matte even tone for the background and this mixture works perfectly.  Then, I began painting in oils on top.  

**I paint on sheets of masonite. You can get masonite at any hardware store, buy a 4ft x 8ft board for about $15 and get them to cut it in any dimensions you want.  You of course have to prep it yourself, gesso, sanding, etc.  It is definitely more labor intensive but you save so much money! (think about it, Claybord is the same thing, and one 18x24 is $18)

Finally, the finished painting!