Tuesday 28 February 2012

Illustration Friday - Week 7 - Capable

For this one, it took some pondering. I was finally able to come up with a theme after listening to some fast paced rock tunes. This week? A capable fighter! An action piece!

For my inspiration, I stumbled upon a lovely painting by Roy Cross.

Cross09

Technique aside, what also makes this painting amazing is the layout. One thing I noticed was the background took a rule from good photography; the quarter rule. If you have the sky and sea in the same picture, make one or the other 75% of the frame, never 50%. It just looks more dynamic. You can't have equal emphasis in a picture. Something needs to take the most space, otherwise it is uninteresting.

So, I fired up Photoshop and picked up some action poses from a google search to use as a starting point. After that, I began my own gesture drawings to get an idea of what I wanted the main character doing.

capableprogress1

I chose a pose I thought had potential and began to tinker with it. Make it better. Stronger.

ROUGHS

And oh was there a lot of tinkering. Fixing this and that, and going back and fixing something else. Finally, I have a rough sketch I can work off of.

ROUGHs2

Now the sketch is cleaned up. Time for color.

finalsroughs CapableFinal

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