Eowyn and the Nazgul Challenge: Reference

Okay, here are the last of the reference shots. I first tried posing my wife as Eowyn, but I failed at communicating what pose I wanted. Also, both my wife and I actually know how to fight with a sword and shield and though she posed in the correct stance, it didn't look visually 'right'. So I donned my old Ren Faire gear and struck a pose. Or two. (Please ignore the half-finished state of my house! Chez Mike shall be a mansion one day.....)

Eowyn. I'll need to alter some shadows but this came out almost perfect.

The Nazgul. I'll need to alter this one a lot because he's mounted. The scabbard will be a mace.

The final step is to print these out and piece it all together. Underpainting starts tonight. Wish me luck!

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!

Eowyn and the Nazgul Challenge: Big Thanks

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.

Eowyn and the Nazgul Challenge: Maquette

So I now have two paintings ongoing. One for my sister-in-law and one for The Art Order Challenge, Eowyn and the Nazgul. No pressure....

As my wife can attest, I went through a panic phase where I couldn't for the life of me think of a good composition for this one. All the heavy-hitters and big names in the illustration business will be looking at this and I wanted something good. In typical fashion, 'something good' never seems to happen when I'm panicked. So I went back to basics and took a page from James Gurney and built a maquette. It's the first time I've done this and I'm a convert. Having something in 3-D right there in front of you that you can always reference and pose and light to your heart's content is a Godsend. I'm not quite done, but I've already got my 'something good' from this. I've got a composition I'm happy with.

Here are the process shots of my 'fell beast' the Nazgul rides. I did quite a lot of research to ensure I got the beast correct. Most people draw it incorrectly as a dragon. It's not. It's actually closer to a Pterosaur crossed with a featherless bird.

A few notes from the text. The beast was small enough to: ‘settle upon the body of Snowmane, digging in its claws, stooping its long naked neck.’  so I made it a bit larger than the average horse, lean enough to fly (large bat-like wings will be added later) but with enough neck to situate the saddle and black rider. Bird comparisons come to mind when the beast attacks Eowyn, just before she cuts it's head off. It is described as ‘...striking with beak and claw.’.

"...striking with beak and claw"

This image shows the scale of the beast. There's a saddle and a part of a leg on top the neck. The Nazgul are depicted many ways visually, but the text only ever specifies a crown, glowing eyes and a robe with a mace for a weapon (I'd wager it's very close to a Knight's mace or Horseman's mace). I'll be sticking to that description and I may put some ornate plate on the legs and arms.

The rider's legs to scale. Not a big beast, but powerful!

A few more shots.

The wattle was an afterthought but a good one.

Wings and tail to be added later.

I fashioned this from Sculpey. I'd like to bake and paint it black to give a more accurate lighting feel, but I don't know if my aluminum armature will crack the piece when heated....so I'll just use my imagination when painting it. Wish me luck.

Review: Color and Light by James Gurney

I hate being sick. Some artists can draw and paint whilst little microscopic lifeforms devour their bodies, but I can't. It's too damned distracting. I just can't concentrate and I always make horrible color and light choices. So I looked around for a good book to read while I coughed and hacked and I cracked open my copy of Color and Light.

I know, I know, what was I waiting for? To be honest, I was afraid to find out how little I knew. I was afraid I wouldn't understand anything in the book. Well it turns out I know more than I thought and with Mr. Gurney's excellent explanations, I actually understood even the most complex principles in the book.

Mr. Gurney provides the best art instruction anyone will ever get in this book. He nails down everything an artist needs to know, from atmospheric perspective to what oil paints are lightfast. He instructs us on how to organize and harmonize our colors and gives us very simple ways to do it.

This book is far undervalued. For the meager price you get the best of a first-class art school. In fact, you get many concepts and tips that some art schools don't even provide. At the very least, you get the best artwork of James Gurney (Dinotopia) on every page; most of it never-before-seen landscapes that will blow your mind.

This book will not teach you how to draw. It's not that kind of book. This is an essential guide to illustrators and painters already working in the field or just knocking on the door of becoming professionals. The information in Color and Light will fill in the cracks of your artistic knowledge. Art-spackle for your flaws.

Train: Underpainting

Now the fun begins. I've taken the small photo of the train that I did my sketch from and projected it onto my gessoed board (masonite). I then applied a wash of acrylic Burnt Sienna and started laying in the dark areas first. When I paint, I'll be working in the mid-tones first, but for the underpainting I like to establish my darks and lights. This locks into my mind the darker and lighter parts of the painting right at the get-go. It also breaks up the monotony of painting the same thing twice as I'm working on different aspects of the painting in this stage and in the actual painting stage.

I work the underpainting in oils, using Burnt Sienna and Pthalo Blue. I do a two-color underpainting mostly to establish what is going to fade into the background (blue) and what is going to be my focus (brown). For this one, I did some of the blue areas in acrylic first but didn't like how that went so I switched back to oils. I find the underpainting stage is very flexible this way. Also, I may throw in different colors for the underpainting based on the colors I'll be using in the final. The theory here is that the underpainting will influence the final oils and if you use a bright or complimentary color under your final oil, the final oil will pick some of that up and really help the colors stand out (or fade back, as the case may be). It's all about establishing focus.

Going back to the topic of focus, I've detailed and darkened the areas that I want to be the focal point (very front of the train) and left the back areas very loose. This will give me a guide as I'm painting and will be a constant reminder of how and where I want the focus. This is essential because when you paint something with tons of detail, like this train, you tend to go overboard and render everything you can see on your reference photo. This is very bad because it produces a flat painting. I want depth and getting the focus right is one way to nail-down depth.

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I've seen artists post pics of their palette and they all look nice and orderly. Mine used to look that way, and sometimes it does, but mostly I use any white surface at hand to act as my palette. In this case I grabbed a paper plate! No matter what I use, I always place my colors around the edges with white in the middle. I'll post a pic of my final oil palette when I'm a bit further on the piece. I almost always use those cheap disposable paper palettes you can pick up at the local crafts store. I suppose I'm more concerned with the paints going on the canvas than arranging them on a nice wooden palette. Each to their own!

Train: Pencil Sketch

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I did a pencil sketch of the train before quoting a price. This is a good practice when you haven't drawn something before. It gives you a good idea of what will be involved because a thing often seems simpler in our heads than it does in reality. I discovered whilst doing this sketch that I don't like drawing trains, but I know from experience that you must be enthused about any piece of artwork you're doing. If you aren't enthused or happy about your artwork, it will show. Emotions come through. So I struggled to finde something to get excited about in this train (it wasn't until the underpainting that I really got excited).

 This sketch took me about an hour and a half to do and I was mostly concerned with getting the larger doo-dads down. This also gave me a good idea on what details I didn't need.