2nd Drawing

I’ve already learnt a lot from work on my first image, now it is time to apply this knowledge. I had already showed, how I decided to spend more time on sketches and setting the scene. That is suppose to prevent from making the same mistakes I did previously.

In the second drawing, I wanted to show my character’s fighting skills and that’s why I thought of battle with pirates. Firstly I had to think of a shot that would make the scene more dynamic. I found very nice reference and decided to use it’s perspective in my drawing.

Another thing was the fight itself. I don’t have much experience in drawing pirates fights, which look much different to medieval fights. As sailors and pirates in 18^th century used mainly rapiers for fighting (not talking about gun powder weapons), it’s style looks like fencing for that kind of weapon is pretty light in comparison to medieval ones. 

 Contestant at the front stands in awaiting position. That's the one I'll probably use. 

I was looking at poses and picked those that were suitable for my scene. After support of research, that’s how the sketch turned out to look like. 

Once I had base for my drawing, I started thinking of lights and tones. This image suppose to be dramatic, usually in films, colors are used to highlight the atmosphere of the scene. That’s the principle I want to use for this image. To help myself establish proper lighting, I was searching for some sunset sky references.

These were two options I took for consideration. 

Strong reds and blues or it’s softer version.

Before applying any of those images into my drawing, I was preparing a template of colors and boundaries for element of the picture. 

That was just a quick action to establish layers. 

Unfortunately I don’t have any copies that show my water creating process and it seems like I was saving everything into one file. On the other hand there is nothing complicated, as I was using photo reference for the background. It only needed a few retouches. First thing I did was to copy the image, for it was too small, and turned it around to make it fit. I had to chop bits of it because they were distorting water surface. After another double copying and pasting and little cosmetic brush touch, the background was ready. As you can see, I decided to use picture with stronger colors. I think it builds very dramatic atmosphere for my pirate attack.

At this image I was establishing lighting by quick marking the railing and ship’s deck. There is also my first mistake still visible because at first I was considering placing the sun at the opposite side. Those brighter marks on characters supposed to be a halo but now they needed updating. I left that for later, now I was focusing on background. 

Working on a deck, as presented on the image above. I started playing with other brushes and it turned out to look pretty good. I like the effect of light “leaking” onto the deck from gaps in between posts. What I don’t like though is the pirate on a railing. I intend to get rid of him as his destroying the good effect because of his wrong body shape.

I polished the deck and I think I like it’s look. At this point my balustrade caught the wrong perspective again but I was planning to work on it on the next stage. Right now I was adding shapes and lights to posts. In my opinion, establishing light worked pretty well but the problem is that halos on poles look way too substantial. That should be a light not material and here it doesn’t look like light. All those points would be changed in next steps but I was getting feedback from tutors and we all agreed that my other sketches look way much better than this one. I predicted that I’ll only have time for two more pictures and that meant leaving this one for later. I didn’t hesitate, as I said, proper sketches are first way to a good picture and that’s why I moved to another drawing.

Conclusion

Thanks to work on that image, I’ve played a little more with texture brushes and it ended up with a pretty nice result. I’m going to follow that path and practice more with them.  

I also got a very useful feedback from my tutor. He suggested using 3d softwares for improving my perspective. I’m definitely going to use it, if I find some time I may try during this project. If not, I’ll use it in the next one, for that I’m hundred percent sure.