Here we are in week 2 already, February is flying by! So this is the week where I piece together all drawings and try and figure out the layout.

I set up this first one and wasn’t really feeling it. Robin Hood seemed really small and unimportant and the whole composition really seemed to be lacking in excitement.
The second one was getting a little better. I brought Robin Hood forward in the scene by making him bigger. I felt that this was making a stronger impact overall but Robin was still fighting for space and attention with the Sasquatch.

In the third one I really started to feel good about the layout. Robin hood was now the center of attention while the Sasquatch become more hidden and further away. I’m sure things will move around again before I am done, but so far this is where I’m at.

My sketch has such big basic shapes that I thought it’d be fun to make a quick 3D mockup of the scene in Maya.  I’m not very good in the program… but spheres and cubes are within my skill set :)  At the very least this should help me get a better sense of the space.  Plus, since I’ll be painting this image digitally I can take the render above and work right on top of it… which might be cheating but will hopefully be a time saver.

By next week I should be pretty well along.  I’ll probably start grayscale to nail down the value structure as I make decisions about the architecture and details of the space.

I was not thrilled when I heard that this month’s theme was medieval.

Medieval… I hate that theme. I don’t like anything about medieval. I don’t like that type of movies. I don’t wanna read the story about that era.

But I still have to make something about medieval…. That made me mad.

I didn’t wanna do typical medieval stuff like dungeons and dragons, etc.

So I had to think hard…

Really hard…

 

Then something struck…

I wanna combine these two totally different things (but they are somehow similar…to me) …

TO BE CONTINUED…

It's week 1 and the word is Medeival.  I decided to start off with the definitions followed by my progress shots thus far.  I am kind of winging it so I don't have much to expound upon right now.  More next week.

me·di·e·val –adjective

1. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or in the style of the Middle Ages: medieval architecture. Compare Middle Ages.
2. Informal . extremely old-fashioned; primitive.

Here we are in our second month already. The word for February is Medieval. Now at first I had an idea for a romantic looking movie called “The Jouster”. Then I started drawing it out and realized that making a movie poster for “Robin Hood vs The Sherwood Sasquatch” would be way better! So I'm doing that instead :)

So I started out by drawing my version of Robin Hood, the idea is that Robin is hiding behind a fallen tree and is looking over at the Sasquatch, who may or may not have Maid Marian held hostage. Next to Robin Hood is the reference photo I took of one of my friends.

For the longest time when I was growing up, I remember feeling that using reference photos was cheating, I'm not really sure why I thought that, but I wish someone had told me sooner. Using reference photos has improved my drawings immensely over the last year and I highly recommend it to anyone that is trying to increase their drawing skills.

A new month: a new word.  The word this round is “Medieval.”  It seems like the prefect theme when you’re working on a story involving time travel… but it proved difficult to find something I was excited about.  I didn’t want to jump into the cliché of knights in their shining armor (at least not yet)… so I’m cheating just a little bit. 

To the left you’ll see a couple thumbnails starting to flesh out an idea.  It’s a room designed to help teach the girl a new way to think about space.   There’s nothing medieval about it.  But if I set the story in the Holy Land during the Crusades and give this crazy room the distinct flavor of Islamic architecture like you’d see in the wonderful Edwin Lord Weeks paintings below… then it just might fly.

 

Ok, this is it. I finished the first theme “future”. It was a good experience over all. It definitely gave me a good idea of what I should do to make things better for my next theme. I think I learned few things thru this project. I should simplify as much as possible and I should also focus on only few things. I first thought that 4 weeks will be a plenty of time to make one art work but it was not the case.

Anyway, I guess I did ok this time.

-n