Hello Patrick and everyone! As promised, I'll show how to get that effect you can see below at the "Here we are..." post. So, first, you'll need Corel Painter on your computer. Then, visit this link, please, 
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ca/en/Content/1170190221936 and watch the video named "Creating the Chalk Underpainting". Using this technique and some very basic painting skills, you will get something like this:
Then, what I've done, I created another layer at the very bottom and did one more underpainting using one of the oil brushes. What Painter does, it delivers all these oily bumps through the whole bunch of layers up to the very top one. So here we go:
Hmmm... Not very impressive, eh? :) I did it very fast. It could be done better, sure thing. But, anyways, even this messy underpainting does its' work in this case. So, having these two layers done, you'll get this:
The last touch, if you want to add some fine details quickly. What I did, I just put the original photo image in between, applied a mask on the top Chalk Underpainting layer. I just slightly revealed a few "important" spots.
That's it!
It's fast and pretty fun to do.
Best regards,
Boris
Hi there!Here's a little update, a couple of sketches I did today.
My son, he has lost his first tooth. And, sure thing, he is very excited about this fact.
Yeah... Hallowww... everybody!.. We did this kinda Spooky Singing Ghost together with my 4 y.o. son Nikita. He did the drawing (for a few seconds), I did the rest (spent some 40 min playing around). If you think that his part looks definitely better than mine – I do agree :o) Yes, son, you did a very cool ghost! I can't do that...
Have a scary one folks!
BwaaHaaaHaaaa.....haaa...
Hey there... Well, this is a preliminary sketch I did digitally. I'd like to make a water color illustration about this "Deep Forest Expedition" later on... But, shhh...

Please, welcome my blue eyed Train Engineer... He just jumped out of my head where he'd been living for a while.
Hi there,
Well, I'm totally in steam. I'm art-directing on Thomas & Friends now.This painting I did, as my little work-out, was a bad quality small screen shot from Youtube at the beginning. There was almost no sky etc.. I repainted the picture, added a little bit of details, added the sky and painted a helicopter in it. Why? Because it's just a cute happy helicopter zipping around. We need one. Sure thing!
P.S. And just in case, there's nothing about the actual upcoming episode here. Just a little bit of fun.
Cheers,Chuff... Chuff... I steamed away... :o)

Hey, Kent! It's your turn, here you go :o)
It's my Mom's birthday today. She is a microbiologist, she also does some DNA-engineering. She has a big and pretty much unique collection of different bacterias at her work. So I did this birthday card for her.Happy Birthday Mommy!!! :o)