Concepting book character - Mehr
As mentioned in my previous post, I went ahead with picking a book character to concept from the description provided in the book. I went with Mehr from Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri. I thought this would be a good start as the book is set in a fantasy South Asian inspired environment and Mehr herself is South Asian, therefore it fits nicely into the type of characters I want to depict.
I started by re-reading key parts of the book which described Mehr's appearance and making notes to help me visualise her. One of her key appearance's is her ritual clothing which she uses to dance Amrithi rites as part of her belief as a person of Amrithi heritage (a fictional race). Below is my first attempt at concepting this character. I tried to not focus on detail too much and also was mindful of how quickly I drew. I wouldn't say I am that happy with how it turned out as her pose looks awkward and I admit I was focusing a lot more on the colours than anything else:
After speaking with Jim last Wednesday and showing him my work from the previous week and the above, he suggested that I should draw Mehr in various poses e.g. sitting, walking, talking etc. and try to use looser sketches. I thought this made a lot of sense as the above did still take a while to do and only with more drawings can I practise a quicker, looser style which both Josh and Jim have suggested now. Jim gave me a target of 3 drawings a day until next Wednesday which equals around 18 drawings of Mehr (6 days x 3).
Since then I have managed to stick to the target by drawing 9 of them from Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Yesterday was my day off and I am in the process of finishing my 3 drawings tonight which I will post in the next batch so I have 9 now to show and 9 in my next post.
Along with the drawings I've posted some reference images I used for outfits:
Day 1
References:
Day 2:
References:
Day 3:
References:
So far I think I am doing better than before, but I feel that my style is still illustrative and not really as loose as Jim wanted them to be. That being said, the final drawing of the nine I've done so far (Day 3 far right - dark blue with flowers) which although is more detailed that the rest of them, took me the shortest time to do (approx. 30 mins). I think this is a result of drawing the previous 8 before this one which had better informed me in terms of drawing the pose the quickest, base colouring and basic shading, therefore I had more time to detail the skirt which is a lot more exquisite than the other outfits.
Learning from this I hope with the next 9 to focus on looser sketches and spending less time on each pose. I'll have to see how they turn out differently but I hope to focus on depicting the important elements without minute detail.
I started by re-reading key parts of the book which described Mehr's appearance and making notes to help me visualise her. One of her key appearance's is her ritual clothing which she uses to dance Amrithi rites as part of her belief as a person of Amrithi heritage (a fictional race). Below is my first attempt at concepting this character. I tried to not focus on detail too much and also was mindful of how quickly I drew. I wouldn't say I am that happy with how it turned out as her pose looks awkward and I admit I was focusing a lot more on the colours than anything else:
After speaking with Jim last Wednesday and showing him my work from the previous week and the above, he suggested that I should draw Mehr in various poses e.g. sitting, walking, talking etc. and try to use looser sketches. I thought this made a lot of sense as the above did still take a while to do and only with more drawings can I practise a quicker, looser style which both Josh and Jim have suggested now. Jim gave me a target of 3 drawings a day until next Wednesday which equals around 18 drawings of Mehr (6 days x 3).
Since then I have managed to stick to the target by drawing 9 of them from Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Yesterday was my day off and I am in the process of finishing my 3 drawings tonight which I will post in the next batch so I have 9 now to show and 9 in my next post.
Along with the drawings I've posted some reference images I used for outfits:
Day 1
References:
Day 2:
Day 3:
References:
So far I think I am doing better than before, but I feel that my style is still illustrative and not really as loose as Jim wanted them to be. That being said, the final drawing of the nine I've done so far (Day 3 far right - dark blue with flowers) which although is more detailed that the rest of them, took me the shortest time to do (approx. 30 mins). I think this is a result of drawing the previous 8 before this one which had better informed me in terms of drawing the pose the quickest, base colouring and basic shading, therefore I had more time to detail the skirt which is a lot more exquisite than the other outfits.
Learning from this I hope with the next 9 to focus on looser sketches and spending less time on each pose. I'll have to see how they turn out differently but I hope to focus on depicting the important elements without minute detail.
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