Starting Somthing New

As I think I've told all of you individually, I'm embarking on a project to revitalize my portfolio and give being an illustrator and honest go. To that end I've dedicated two nights a week as no excuses art nights and put on indefinite hold all the little never finished personal projects that muddy my art time. All but one that is clearly defined and achievable through incremental goals. 6 portfolio pieces in 6 months. All based on the Bros. Grimm story Iron John PDF.  All the same dimensions and medium (medium yet to be determined).  I'm doing all the preliminary work together so hopefully all of them are finished right after the other and achieve a level of harmony. January yielded thumbnails. 

Image one is the discovery of Iron John in a dried pond in a forest. I'm leaning bottom right with the figure crouching low holding a dog skull (he kills a dog).
 

Next is the Prince protagonist confronting a captured Iron John in a cage in his father's courtyard. Theme here is imposing wildness over the naive prince. Oh, and i think i never want to show the prince's face if I can get away with it. Fave here is lower left.

Here the prince who now live with Iron John in the forest has been tasked with guarding a magic well which guilds whatever touches its waters. Left is birds eye view of prince reaching in, a la Christina's World. Right is looking up at the wavy silhouette of the prince from in the well through the surface of the water. His finger may be piercing the water. Yeah, leaning this one.

These are #4 and 5. 4, on the left, is the prince in armor and with an army, both given to him by Iron John, marching to the gallant defense of his adopted kingdom. Right is five with the prince in new iron john armor fleeing palace guards, after winning a tournament and refusing to unmask. Admittedly i liked these two and didnt do other variations, but let me know.

I have #6 thumbed, but am at present w/o a scanner so that will come with the next update. I really am looking forward to your crits and input on this friends. Motivational phone call all around!

b.

Only If For a Night

Whilst casually perusing these fair interwebs about a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a design contest. The gist of the contest is as follows:

Design artwork based on a single off the album of one of the following artists/bands: Ben Howard, Bombay Bicycle Club, DJ Shadow, The Cure, Noah and the Whale, CSS, and Florence + the Machine. The designs chosen by the band, or voted amongst the 5 highest by the general public, will be printed on an 7" album sleeve, displayed in a record shop in London, and sold...with all of the proceeds going to the Teenage Cancer Trust. There's no monetary compensation for the designers, just exposure and the feeling that you've helped an awesome cause.

The second I saw the words 'create artwork' and 'Florence + the Machine', I was sold. The fact that is was for a charity that helps teenage cancer patients only sweetened the deal. Florence's song "Only If For a Night" is the single they selected as the basis for the design.

One of the most appealing factors of Florence Welch's music is that it has such an elegant and ethereal feel to it. As lame as it sounds, one of the best representations of the visual imagery I get from her music is the design of Lady Galadriel and her city of Lothlorien from the Lord of the Rings movies. To me, the mixture of unearthly mysticism and the heavily Art Nouveau-inspired sensibilities -- in both dress and architecture -- are an apt summation of the image and sound Florence exudes. When creating my design, I knew that these were things that I definitely wanted to work into my piece.

The sketch in the upper left-hand corner was the first idea I came up with: a central image of Florence in front of delicately patterned framework -- some manner of portal between real life and the dreamy milieu of her music. The thumbnail included the phases of the moon going around the center circle, but I left those out of the final piece due to time constraints. I also changed the color scheme and pose of Florence for the finished piece in order to match the more somber and reverent tone of the song.

The head on the right is a failed attempt at my second idea: doing a straight portrait. I didn't really consult my reference image while rendering, so whatever likeness the base drawing had to Florence was lost. This influenced my decision to make it a more stylized likeness, that way I could spend less time on worrying how 100% accurate it was and spend more time on the drawing as a whole.

Anyway, this is the finished piece. I do wish I had a little more time (since I was working on it up till 20 minutes before it was due), but I am pretty happy with how it turned out. Voting on the artwork doesn't end until noon to 1ish on January 26th (this Thursday!), so if you haven't voted and want to, then click right here. As Christina discovered, if you have a Facebook and a Twitter, you can vote using both a.k.a. vote twice because you love me. :D