From May 29 to June 3, I directed all of my artistic energy towards one goal. At the time, I didn't realize it would take so long. After my first day, I decided to make scans of my work in progress, and here they are. Note that if you click on an image, it will be bigger, and you can use the mouse-wheel to quickly zoom from one to another, almost making an animation effect.
First I sketched the basic outlines of everything. This was surprisingly quick, given I've never worked at this scale before. The lines here are very light; I had to adjust the brightness on the scan so it would show up. I figured I could correct any mis-proportioned places later. As it is, I got everything pretty close on my first time. Hardest part here were the eyes.
I made the conscious choice to just make the background black. It makes the foreground pop out more, and it saves me from trying to shade more complex background stuff. Note that it's supposed to be all black: imperfections in the paper show up in the scan, giving it that stripy-look. When you hold the page tight, it looks better. Still, lesson learned: don't use cheap paper for creating masterpieces.
For some reason this scan showed up really light; I must have done something wrong with the settings. Here I've started to shade in the far left rocks and water, as well as lots of work on the main platform. It's hard to see, but basically I'm putting in the darkest areas first and drawing the lighter stuff around it. Even harder to see is the reflection in the water, which took me a small eternity to draw. I didn't realize how hard water was to draw until right then!
This is better quality. The background is now set, but most of the work was on the main platform. I had a lot of trouble with it. It's supposed to be a mix between showing the grain of the rock as well as reflections from the water. The small, left-most side looks good; the other side I'm less happy with, but I didn't know how to fix it. Live and learn.
Here is the most pain-staking step, shading in the water region. I had no idea how to show the ripples in the water. I just shaded well around it, to save it for later, and when I was done, it looked like ripples! Success by avoiding! I decided here to make all the reflections lighter than the things being reflected. This created a succesful illusion, I think, and made it easier for me. Likewise with my decision to simplify the reflection; I had little chance or completely recreating the platform details, and why would I want to? It would just steal focus from Nala's eyes.
Here's the end product of my labour of love. The darkest black is her eyes, right in the centre. Again, blame the poor paper and/or the scanner for making her shading look splotchy. She looks much better on the page. Oddly enough, the hardest finishing touch was figuring out how to sign it. I've never made a full picture before. Do I fully sign and date it? Just sign it? Just date it? On the front or the back? Do I need a special art signature, different from my own? In the end, I just went with initials and date, but I reserve the right to change my artistic signature in the future.
Random Thoughts
After the third day, I began to grow extremely worried about some chance disaster. What if I spilled my water on it? Or worse, if I make a silly mistake with my pencil and leave a line indelibly across the middle of the page? I got a little paranoid, not eating food anywhere near it, using my pencil extra softly and washing my hands almost religiously on the half-hour. Working on projects that take weeks to finish must take a lot of mental fortitude!
I think the image as a whole is very good, especially for my humble standards. Besides the platform shading, which isn't that bad, I only have issue with the big ear and left-eye region, which are both slightly off. Not terrible, not picture ruining, but enough to make me frown when I study the area. Again, though, considering my inexperience, this is amazing.
Trying to finish this was tough. I mean actually finish it, complete it, put it down and say job well done. I kept coming back, trying to add little details, soften out one more texture, define a particular region just a little more. I knew that once I signed my name it would be done, game over, no more editing, and after a solid week that was hard to do. Picasso's quip, "I don't finish my paintings, I abandon them" has some real truth to it! It's going to feel weird to wake up tomorrow and draw something that isn't this picture.
Finally, a note on the date. When written in numerical form, most people either do month/day/year (ie, June 3rd, 2012 would be 6/3/2012) or day/month/year (3/6/2012). I find neither optimal. With the first option, why is the day, the smallest unit of time, in the middle of two bigger units? This doesn't seem very logical; reason suggests either go from smallest to large or vice versa. The problem with the second option is it is horribly inefficient. I've had to go through receipts over a multi-year period, and I needed to read the receipts backwards to fully organize them. That sucked.
This leaves the last method, my preferred method: year, month, date. This is highly logical: the year is often the most important piece of information, and the one that changes the least often, and it is listed first, followed by the month, the next biggest unit, followed by the day. June 3rd is thus rendered 2012/06/03, with or without the placeholder zeroes. This date isn't ambigious (seeing 6/3/12 makes you wonder if it's June 3 or March 6) and it is very easy to organize or compare different dates. In six years, say, if I needed to organize all my art, I sort first by the first number, then by the second number, and then by the third. Logic! Clarity! Simple! Easy! I know very few people who use this system, but it's the best. Spread the word.
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