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Jan. 23rd, 2009 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flameravenMaaan. Now I really wanna go to the Southwest.
I've spent most of the evening looking up pictures of various hawks for my illustration project (mostly Harris Hawks, because they live in the Southwest and I wanted to draw one perched on a cactus and also because they are awesome). The idea has morphed over time, and now I think that while I may not do my initial idea (steampunk cowboys riding hawks and having dogfights in mid-air!) I will just paint the pretty, pretty birds and may come back to the crazy western django later.
See, I've been struggling with this project, because the assignment is just "paint anything!" but this is for the Society of Illustrators scholarship competition, and with prizes ranging from $500-2000, I obviously want to do my best so I have a decent crack at things. And this leaves me with the conundrum of trying to both play to my strengths and do something that will be really cool and different and awesome so they give me lots of money. Which is, you know, kinda hard to think around.
The two initial ideas I had totally fell apart because they were too complicated. The first one involved Izeli surf/hoverboarding through traffic in a City of Rain in The Future. This is a really neat idea, but once I sat down and realized I was going to have to look up a million references for the cars and the highway and the rain and the city in the background and the LIGHTING PROBLEMS OMG... yeah, I dropped it pretty quick. (I might still do this later, but... yeah. Not now. It's too complex and doesn't really advertise my strengths, anyway.)
Then last week, I sat down and looked through my collection of reference images, found one of an astrological clock in Prague, thought "hm that's neat, I bet it would make a cool mysterious gate!" Aaaand again it was too complicated. I sat down and drew out a really big picture that... totally failed composition-wise and was far too complex. Tch. So I had to erase it all. Again, it was a neat idea, but too complex to mess with right now.
So today I sat down and was like "okay I have to think of something," because I need to start this painting tomorrow in order to be able to finish it during the week (Saturday and Sunday will be taken up by the Creative Native competition). And I just... started poking around and then "Hidden Village" came on Windows Media Player (which is the track that plays during a very western shoot-out in Twilight Princess) and I thought "hmmmm, what about a western?"
And from there I ended up with tiny people riding hawks into dogfights. I don't know. Unfortunately the composition wasn't quite working with two hawks... you couldn't really see the people riding them and the tension I wanted just wasn't there.
But. I have a picture of a hawk in a really cool position, like she's about to leap into the sky, and I think I'm going to go with that. Just the hawk, about to take off, with a really colorful and textured background, in a sort of yellow ochre. Hm. Maybe a more twilit scene. Dunno yet. It'll be super simple, but that's really feeling to me like the key here. Besides, last year there was some guy who just painted a really detailed cat and he got something, so why not?
Mind you, I don't know what Kathy is going to say. She hasn't really asked for any new sketches even though I'm pretty sure she knows I'm not doing my original thing anymore.
Anyway, the point of all of this is I started looking at the Southwest pictures for inspiration, and... I really need to go to the Grand Canyon sometime soon, or just out West, because everything looks amazing. o_o I am from flat land, these crazy rock formations just blow my mind, man.
Also I highly suspect this picture of a hawk is going to end up with like three pictures of hawks and tiny people having shoot-outs at high noon, but you know. Sometimes these things just happen.
Although I still have to paint the octopus first.
I've spent most of the evening looking up pictures of various hawks for my illustration project (mostly Harris Hawks, because they live in the Southwest and I wanted to draw one perched on a cactus and also because they are awesome). The idea has morphed over time, and now I think that while I may not do my initial idea (steampunk cowboys riding hawks and having dogfights in mid-air!) I will just paint the pretty, pretty birds and may come back to the crazy western django later.
See, I've been struggling with this project, because the assignment is just "paint anything!" but this is for the Society of Illustrators scholarship competition, and with prizes ranging from $500-2000, I obviously want to do my best so I have a decent crack at things. And this leaves me with the conundrum of trying to both play to my strengths and do something that will be really cool and different and awesome so they give me lots of money. Which is, you know, kinda hard to think around.
The two initial ideas I had totally fell apart because they were too complicated. The first one involved Izeli surf/hoverboarding through traffic in a City of Rain in The Future. This is a really neat idea, but once I sat down and realized I was going to have to look up a million references for the cars and the highway and the rain and the city in the background and the LIGHTING PROBLEMS OMG... yeah, I dropped it pretty quick. (I might still do this later, but... yeah. Not now. It's too complex and doesn't really advertise my strengths, anyway.)
Then last week, I sat down and looked through my collection of reference images, found one of an astrological clock in Prague, thought "hm that's neat, I bet it would make a cool mysterious gate!" Aaaand again it was too complicated. I sat down and drew out a really big picture that... totally failed composition-wise and was far too complex. Tch. So I had to erase it all. Again, it was a neat idea, but too complex to mess with right now.
So today I sat down and was like "okay I have to think of something," because I need to start this painting tomorrow in order to be able to finish it during the week (Saturday and Sunday will be taken up by the Creative Native competition). And I just... started poking around and then "Hidden Village" came on Windows Media Player (which is the track that plays during a very western shoot-out in Twilight Princess) and I thought "hmmmm, what about a western?"
And from there I ended up with tiny people riding hawks into dogfights. I don't know. Unfortunately the composition wasn't quite working with two hawks... you couldn't really see the people riding them and the tension I wanted just wasn't there.
But. I have a picture of a hawk in a really cool position, like she's about to leap into the sky, and I think I'm going to go with that. Just the hawk, about to take off, with a really colorful and textured background, in a sort of yellow ochre. Hm. Maybe a more twilit scene. Dunno yet. It'll be super simple, but that's really feeling to me like the key here. Besides, last year there was some guy who just painted a really detailed cat and he got something, so why not?
Mind you, I don't know what Kathy is going to say. She hasn't really asked for any new sketches even though I'm pretty sure she knows I'm not doing my original thing anymore.
Anyway, the point of all of this is I started looking at the Southwest pictures for inspiration, and... I really need to go to the Grand Canyon sometime soon, or just out West, because everything looks amazing. o_o I am from flat land, these crazy rock formations just blow my mind, man.
Also I highly suspect this picture of a hawk is going to end up with like three pictures of hawks and tiny people having shoot-outs at high noon, but you know. Sometimes these things just happen.
Although I still have to paint the octopus first.
