Ostiant or Chalenduin

The artwork I did for caitriona_3's entry for the mag7bigbang was posted in the comm as well as on her writing journal, fancy_flights, so I feel I can post the artwork itself here too.

Below you can see the artwork. :) (Click for a full sized view.)



The drawing represents Three Great Figures that appear in her story - Lord Death, Mother Nature, and Father Time. [Wall o' text coming. :)]

• Lord Death was the easiest to do, I think, since I didn't have to worry about his facial features. :) His figure was also easier since it was mostly covered in robes that gave a suggestion of his shape. It was fun using several colors to indicate many folds in his robes. It is recommended to build up black from several darker shades as using just black leaves you with a flat drawing. I don't know if I managed to avoid that. I had too look far and wide for the right kind of scythe I wanted to use. In the end, I managed to find a good reference, and copied the blade. The handle was easy to do using a ruler.


• Mother Nature came next. For her, I had to rely on reference photos and gridding extensively. I don't know if I managed to convey a darker skin color for her, as that is how I imagine Mother Nature. As for her eyes, they are described as changing color, and this I tried to show with coloring one eye green, the other one blue. I don't know if you can see this, as scanning color pencil is notoriously difficult. (I have a larger version that's not as cleaned up as this that I can post on request if you want to see.) For her robes, I wanted to use dark blue for the outer robes to represent the night sky, and I also wanted to have sparkles to stand in for the stars, but I'm afraid that was quite out of my league. Perhaps I'll do an edit and introduce some sparkle in a photo editing program! :) Looking at her dress, perhaps I should have used another color instead of pink, maybe another shade of green or blue, but I kept thinking about mother-of-pearl and how it was hidden away in a shell and quite beautiful, which is also another way I look at this grand figure of Mother Nature - she can be quite hard on the outside, but vulnerable and beautiful on the inside. In spite of using a grid to get an accurate drawing of Mother Nature, I still feel that it's not quite right.
  


• That is I think especially evident in Father Time and his robe. I have a feeling that it's quite off, but can't put my finger on what's off about it, exactly. Maybe I didn't get the folds correctly? :squints at him: In any case, he is different from mother Nature in that he's quite pale, translucent maybe, and I tried to present the idea that time is transient. He's described in the story as both young and old, so I tried to represent that with gray hair and beard, youthful face but with some wrinkles on the right side of his face. ETA: I forgot to say that I used the infinity symbol as decoration for his robes. I was just reminded of this because my sis sent me an image of a gorgeous necklace with an infinity symbol.
• No background, I'm sorry to say. :) I also wanted to illustrate a few key points in the story, but the amount of work and school obligations really limited the time I was able to dedicate to this BigBang, so in the end I only did the cover.

Comments and critique are welcomed ad appreciated. :)

Reposting my first card because I only posted it at mag7daybook.

( Noose... )

This is my second entry for the magnificent Seven Bingo, this time the card in question was "Snake Oil". I found an image on Google that I liked, and since it was fairly complicated, I used the square method of putting it down on paper. I find it most useful when I'm dealing with complex subjects , since I can concentrate on smaller pieces at a time.

Still, I found that I couldn't get his face quite right, so I enlarged and printed the original image, and transferred the facial features by taping the original and my drawing to a window.

I used a ruler for the stick, and scales for the circle. I placed a piece of cardboard down to prevent piercing the paper.