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Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Piece Of the Day- Day 1 "Deborah"

What's up peeps, it's been a while.

Even though I feel like I've been gone forever, don't think I've been slacking. A lot of exciting things have been going on, and I'll be updating more frequently. Amidst all of the news that will be coming, what will be precedent for the month of October is my "Artpiece-of-the-Day" goal. Every day for the month of October I'll be posting a new piece of art, plus providing some behind the scenes sketches and commentary. Each pic will be as "complete" as I can make it, depending on what was called for with the project, meaning some pieces may be more elaborate than others, but the ultimate goal here is for me to be more productive.

So, with that intro out of the way, let's get the ball rolling with "Deborah"

Above is my sketch of the character to get her "feel". The client's description read "
Deborah is a beautiful (much more the urban standard of beauty than the typical Hollywood standard), curvaceous African woman with long braids not dreadlocks. She is about 19 years old. She is dark skinned and has very defined muscles, but she does not have overly large muscles. She has on dark pants and a light brown tactical vest. Under her vest she has a low cut green shirt that shows off her ample cleavage. An AK-47 is strapped to her back. In her hand is a machete dripping blood. Her face is almost in a snarl."
The first thing I did was check with the client to see what kind of world the characters inhabited- in other words, how fantastical did he want it and how far I could go. He let me know this was to be "real world" and present day. With any character design I believe in research first, no matter if it's based in reality or fantasy, so after some reference checks on military and police clothing, I had my look. 



With this being the finished piece. As you can see I veered from the AK-47 and gave her a more powerful piece. (I wish I had saved the info on what gun I used for reference). The description said she was pretty strong, so I just thought it would be interesting and visually appealing to see this young woman holding up this heavy, bad-ass instrument of death.
Sometimes I do a sketch and it comes out perfect and really fluid and organic, then when I try to capture that same feel to the final page without a lightbox I lose the appearance or energy of the piece, but in this case I'm pretty happy with what came out.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to follow me on this path of me seeking to be a more productive and better artist. Catch you tomorrow.

Peace.
S

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