Thursday, February 4, 2021

Tom Sawyer Batch #3

This batch was both where I hit my stride and where the work overwhelmed me. I had juggled each batch by putting in extra work in the color phase, because the rendering phase was simply too little time. But when each batch of illustrations started to overlap, that cushion disappeared. Now, I'm trying to finish last revisions on batch #2, render batch #3, and begin sketches and planning batch #4. Not to mention how complex some of these illustrations became! Overall, I think this batch is the most inconsistent. The speed I needed to work at actually pushed me to get some nice painterly effects. I'm especially proud of Outlaw Joe's hand here.

And Tom's expression and his curled hands here.


But some of that panic actually, counterintuitively, made me hyper-focus on trouble pieces, and they end up losing energetic brush strokes. These next two turned out to be some of my least favorite images. I wish I had many more hours on them, or maybe even a do-over. But, they got finished, and that's the most important part!

You can also see that the needs of the composition and the lack of time to plan it out made for some static design. Even though the clothing and maybe even the teacher's face look nice in this image, it lacks flow and focus.

That being said, I definitely felt like my process got hammered down, and it opened up future illustrations to really shine.



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