GBWIP#3

Hazy sky, now on to the water, which is proving... challenging.

GBWIP#2

The skin is mostly done, now on to the craggy shell.  I think I'll probably come back and try to play with some reflected color in the final stages of this.  Light bouncing up from the water and such.  As well as fix up the oddball highlight on the right arm.  I got a bit carried away with my whites, and realized that that arm would more than likely be in the shadow of the nearby cliff, and therefore not have a striking edge light. Ah well, easier to fix when it's dry.

The GB WIP

Plan on wrapping up all of the skin tomorrow.  Also, I am enjoying painting on canvas, as opposed to board, greatly.

And I go to bed this evening sad, having just learned that Frank Frazetta passed away.  People have all kinds of heroes, one of mine happened to be an illustrator who usually said he'd rather be playing ball. 

'bout Time.

About time I get this off the easel.

Progression

The raven and refining remain.

I should really stop by more often...

Some WIP-ery on the Bard/Self-Portrait.

Photocopy of the drawing mounted to MDF board.

C'mon baby light ma faiyah...

Pretty sure the background is set at this point.  Now it's time for the important bits...

Bard. Me. Me Bard...

A little progress post.

Another piece from The Hobbit, as well as the "How do I work?" category.  I feel like I'm getting closer to figuring things out.  The beasty from the last post definitely got me thinking in more step-by-step terms, a set process to work through, if you will.  But I'm still not totally sold on a few issues.  I may just be hard-headed at this point...

This is Bard, and as I'm not sure if my Mom has finished reading the book yet, I'll leave it at that.

A little sharpie thumbnail, was digging this.  Lots of energy.

Learning from mistakes.  This is a terrible drawing, I debated not posting it.  I may yet remove it.  But it serves a purpose for the moment - this is out of my head, going off of the sketch above, and it is useless.  It solves no compositional problems, it's stiff, inaccurate, and just plain bad.  Now I think I may leave it up, just to shame myself into never drawing like this again...

My faithful assistant, getting ready to give some critique...

"Something looks a little off..."

"There.  I fixed it."

I had a lot of reference for this one, so I'm not gonna post all of them, but in summary:  I did pose using a stick and a curtain rod for the bow and arrow, and I definitely took a picture of one of our stew pots to get ideas on reflected metal... So here is the drawing thus far:

Well, that's not quite how the drawing stands, I finished most of it up (I think) before I sat down to post this.  Originally, I wasn't going to make this a self-portrait, but then I figured I might as well go for it, as I haven't done one in a while, Bard is a pretty cool character, and I didn't feel like looking up another face to plop on my figure.  I also haven't worked this realistically in a while, we'll see where this goes.  I'm not sure if I want to continue working with this much realism, but I have a feeling it may be good for me to really crank out some polished pieces.  Plan from here is to get a copy made of this drawing (it's 20x30, I just wanted to do something big) then mount the copy to masonite, seal it in, and then paint.  I'll make another brief post when I've got the painting surface ready.

One last note, I should have done a quick reread before I started drawing.  It's a thrush that comes to Bard, not a raven.  Ah well, at least I'll have a self-portrait out of it.  And another thing that this particular piece is teaching me, is that there is ALWAYS so much more to learn.  And after chewing on that a bit, I find it incredibly refreshing.