A huge thanks to James Gurney for his kind words about my maquette. He even took the time to post about bat wings on his blog to give me a bit of help, knowing that the wings are the part I'm currently working on (I hope others who are doing this challenge got the chance to read James' post). I've revised my wing structure to reflect the information in his post.
When I draw anything fantastic or imaginary I try to be as accurate as I can and pull from nature as much as possible. What I fashion needs to be possible . It needs to work, at least in my mind (much thanks to Ed Garcia for teaching me that year and years ago). That germ of physical 'truth' I try to put in my drawings (or sculptures) is what, I feel, connects the piece with the viewer. It's a bit of a 'grounding' element to them. A platform of reality that they can leap from to get to the fantastic. The truth inside of the lie, if you will. This is why I love James Gurney's art...it's well thought out and looks like it could actually work.
Anyway, the deadline looms and I'm getting back to work. Today should finish off the maquette and tonight I sketch some ideas from it. It might seem like I'm wasting an awful lot of time with the maquette when I've got about a week left to finish this, but like Mary Poppins says "Well begun is half done". If I can get the composition and lighting right, the actual painting goes by super fast. All this prelim work is to get composition and lighting.
The strength of any work of art isn't the paint laid down on the canvas, its the composition. No amount of painting prowess can save a badly composed piece while a great composition will be a fantastic painting even half finished.
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