Chick Challenge on ConceptArt

Well, I turned in my art entry, although I wasn't quite finished with it. sigh. No matter - I wanted to show my support for the ladies of the ConceptArt forum...and have a bit of fun with an illustration project that I just don't often have the time to create. :)

And I did have fun! Soooooo tired today, though.

I've posted some of my WIPs here to show from thumbnail sketches to "finished" product. I'll be doing the last updates to it over the weekend and then post it. Maybe include a before and after kind of thing, heh.

The final image was composited and colored in Photoshop from various scans of the detailed pencil drawings that I did. The pencil work was done on a Hot Press Illustration board at approximately 12" x 18" in size which was scanned in at 300 dpi. I drew the elements with a 2H pencil mostly, with the occasional 4B here and there for a few patches of darkness.

Here are a few (not all) of the thumbnails sketches I did first to explore the story and imagery that I thought could be told by the lyrics of Delerium's "Fallen Icons":

I considered these as primary elements - dark woods, snow, fire/lightening, golden arrow, fortress ruin. And I thought about these themes - self discovery, becoming the hunter, rage at the enemy, change, resurrection, once upon a time long ago, legends, fairy tales. So I came up with these kind of scenarios or Character stories - rising up from the grave, being turned into a vampire, the monster inside, changing into the monster, from the seed to a tree (Shannara style), etc. So, after considering the words, "In a dark woods paved with snow living all alone, I forgot long ago what I'm looking for...", I finally thought about taking an old fairy tale like Little Red Robin Hood and looking at it in a different way. Like maybe one of her descendents has just found out that she's about to become a werewolf (there's the self discovery!) because her many-times great-grandmother got bitten when she got lost in the woods (long, long ago). :) I blame the recent movie series "Ginger Snaps" that I watched and the Patricia Brigg's book, "Moon Called" that I've already read twice for additional inspiration.

Besides, I still have a fondness for "The Company of Wolves" and I do like Angela Carter's other interesting stories...

Here are scenes from my dining table of the pencils in progress:

The project took about 20 hours to get to the above "finished" state. Breaking that down into blocks of development time, I'd say I spent about 6 hours on research and rough sketches; about 10 hours on the detailed underdrawing and 4-5 hours on coloring. Which is why I'm not finished. :)

I have about 4 more hours of pencil work to do on the missing characters and then about another 6-8 hours coloring that and doing the over-painting. I'm going to try and get that done over the weekend. By next Wednesday for sure.

Cause I've got too many other projects I want to work on!!!!

Bwa haha ha ha!!!