THE KING II - Finished

Sooooooooo, as you can see above, this piece took an unexpected turn ! About this time last night, I was ready to tear this thing up, throw it in the garbage and start all over again. I'm glad I didn't.

I started off with a basic pencil sketch of my central figure here, The King :

I was honestly really happy with the way it looked, so I went ahead and gave him some ink :

So far, so good, right ? At this point, my intention was to make this a grayscale watercolor painting. So I got out my painting supplies, started applying some gray wash and proceeded to butcher the entire thing. I don't know what happened, it just did not look anything like it should have (sorry, no pic). I nearly ripped it up, but instead I kept it to use as a reference because I planned on starting over from scratch.


Fast forward to today. I put my son down for a nap and decided to revisit the devastation. I was just about ready to start over when I decided to do a little experiment. I just started penciling in some skulls in the background. I drew in 5 or 6 of them, then grabbed my brush pen and started adding some ink. Apparently I was on to something. 81 skulls later, we have the finished product. I added a few highlights at the end with a white gel pen. The gray wash I had originally put down actually worked perfect as a contrast between the skulls and the central figure.

I can honestly say that this is the most rewarding piece I've done in years. Not because I think it looks great, but because I was able to persevere through failure and make something out of nothing. I hope you all enjoy looking at it as much as I did making it !

Thanks for reading !!!

Experimenting

 Well I've decided to take a break from drawing other peoples creations for a while. It's time for me to get creative and just come up with things on my own. The 2 pieces above are the result of experimenting with some new materials and techniques. Both were drawn with my new Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (which I love so far) on 9x12 watercolor paper. I also added a little inkwash to these for some background and shading. I'm gonna be trying some more new things here. Using different types and colors of India ink and different methods of applying them. I'm enjoying playing with these new toys right now, and I feel like it's starting to lead me in a good direction creatively. Still trying to define myself a little more stylistically, but I feel like I'm getting closer. Thanks for reading !