Art Order

So my last post was the first few processes in my art submission for the Art Order Story Extraction...And I finished it...Well...as finished as it's going to be.

There are some obvious changes...like a massive amount of cropping for one. I did this for two reasons. 1. I wanted the characters subtle facial expressions to read and, 2. It meant less work, which means less time. If this was for an art director I never would have dreamed of doing that once the initial sketch was approved...however...There is no art director except me...And he said to crop it. *shrug*
I also changed up the sky a bit. I had spent hours on the sky according to my initial sketch and the color study I had done. It looked like crap. Udder crap. Yep, you read it right...that's crap with four teats. I just couldn't get it to work, so I scrapped it all and started over again. It's better than it was, but I'm still not satisfied....but then, with regards to my work, am I ever? The answer to that would be a big, morbidly obese 'NO'.

At any rate. ENJOY!

Art Order Challenge.

So I've decided to participate in the Story Extraction Art Order Challenge for July. http://theartorder.com/2011/07/13/story-extraction-artorder-challenge/ I chose the steampunk scene of an airship coming upon a city set into the mountains.
After some thumbnails, a couple of my friends were gracious enough to pose for me.

So generally when I do drawings for paintings I'm not necessarily trying to make a beautiful drawing. Most of the marks I make are really just a complicated series of notes I've made based from the reference shots I took. If you'll notice, most of the dark shadowed areas are noted by dark hash marks. The detail level is extreme in the most important areas and the lines get more bulky or lighter the less important something is...or less "notes" I'll need when I start painting. Clouds and mountains need less notations than say, the airships, so there's a slightly higher degree of detail with those. Generally the notes include shadows, contours, plane changes and perspective marks so when I start painting I can make my brush stokes move around the forms, lending more depth and dimension to the objects in the painting.

The way these guys are drawn kept reminding me of 'Take On Me' by Ah-Ha. I had that song stuck in my head constantly while drawing....so....in honor of that... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914&ob=av3e