Eowyn and the Nazgul Challenge: Comp Sketch

Now that the maquette is done enough to use, I've moved onto my first comp sketch. This was done in charcoal pencil on tracing paper while looking at the maquette. The general idea here is to get all the elements I want in the picture actually working together. I'm not worried about anything being rendered properly at this stage, I just want an overall view of the final so I know what problems there are before applying any paint. For example, the horse at the bottom and the beast's tail need composition fixes.

The darker bits of the fell beast's neck was intended to be the area the viewer focuses on first, but after looking at the piece, I now want the Witch King to be the initial focus with your eyes running along the beast's neck to Eowyn. A Chiaroscuro effect between the dark beast's head and Eowyn's radiant blonde hair should provide a 'carrot' for your gaze, keeping you interested in Eowyn. Secondary focus will be her shield and the field of grass. A shadow pattern on the ground should lead your eyes down Eowyn and to the fallen Snowmane and back around to the fell beast. Well, that's the idea, anyway!

I feel this is the most important step in a painting because it lets you establish right away your focus. My next step is to photograph my wife with sword and board in Eowyn's pose and draw that on another piece of tracing paper. Then I'll be finding horse reference and doing the same for Snowmane. The Witch King will be another maquette with real cloth to simulate the folds. I'll re-shoot the maquette and project that onto the board with the rest of the elements added in and moved around a bit.

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Here's the maquette set-up in the final pose. I added yellow construction paper below to give some yellow reflected light from the yellow field of Pelennor and a sheet of blue construction paper for the sky reflection. It's all rudimentary, but all I'm after is an idea of where the light will be reflected.

I decided to stop work on the wings due to time constraints. It was a tough decision, but I think I'll render them in Photoshop. I've been a graphic artist for 20 years now and I've worked with Photoshop since it hit the scene many moons ago. I'm intimately familiar with it and can do the wings in about a half hour.

I *do* plan on finishing this maquette after the ArtOrder/Muddy Colors challenge is done. I've discovered that I quite like sculpting and I'm pretty happy with the way this little maquette is developing!