After the success of my RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars 4 series, I decided to continue through with a memento portrait for each queen as they were eliminated.
To warm up for this personal art challenge, I drew each of the newly-announced queens faces in my sketchbook after the RuVeal Special. This warm-up piece was done entirely in fineliner felt-tip pens.
S11 RuVeal Runway Looks Sketchbook Page
Since their brands are not as established as the All-Stars queens, I decided to go with a simpler layout. As each was eliminated, I did a portrait of my favorite look from the season, including one brand “altar” item and a scroll with their name, and cycled through the colors of the rainbow for the background across the series.
Each 4″x6″ card was drawn on smooth bristol paper using a mix of Copic markers, Micron fineliners, and Gelly Roll pens. They each took around 6-8 hours to complete and you can check out the full series below:
Follow me on Instagram (@samsoper.art) to keep up with my latest projects and Drag Race fan art! I’m planning on tackling a Legends series in my downtime before All-Stars 5 starts up again.
As RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars 4 was airing, I got the idea to do a portrait of each queens as they were voted off, featuring my favorite looks from the season.
Since they all have established brands and quotable phrases, I wanted to incorporate some of these elements into the portrait. My formula for this series was a solid colored background with some sort of boundary breaking brand element, three “altar” items collected below, and one of their quotes.
Check out the full series below (in rainbow order):
Follow me on Instagram (@samsoper.art) to keep up with the latest drawings of the season 11 queens. It’s going to be elevengendary.
This year, when my friend Jacque’s hubby met his idol, the fantastic Dave Grohl, she knew of the perfect gift for him to honor this exciting moment.
She had seen the black ink drawings I did in preparation for the Afterhours Canvas Battle and commissioned me to help capture this moment in a similar style.
Overall, this 11″x14″ piece took around 6 hours to complete, done entirely in black ink with Micron and Stabilo fineliners with Sharpie and Copic markers on Strathmore smooth bristol paper.
Reference Photo
Sketchbook Draft
Final Portrait
If you’d like to commission your own fan portrait, click here to see my rates and make a request!
After seeing a couples portrait that I did during MerMay, shared by a mutual friend, Nicole reached out to me via Instagram to have something similar done of her and her beau, Conrad.
She loved the sparkle effect I had given to one of my other MerMay portraits and wanted to channel some Ursula fierceness in her portrait, while she imagined Conrad as half-shark.
If you’d like to commission your own fantasy portrait, click here to see my rates and make a request!
This pet portrait was commissioned by my longtime friend Adam, who wanted to see his dog Harry as the star of Singing in the Rain. After a few brief concepts, I worked up this fun and fantastical piece for him!
If you’d like to commission your own fantasy pet portrait, click here to see my rates and make a request!
I designed and custom airbrushed these Mary Poppins sunglasses for my little sister, who was basically super nanny for 3-4 years.
Due to my lack of knowledge of propellant adherence on plastics at the time, they unfortunately didn’t last, but I at least snapped a few pictures of them before all the paint flaked off.
