It seems strange to say that this was the most difficult installment so far, since I feel that way about every piece. This one was, though. Let's get right to it.
A few pages of thumbnails down and I had nothing. Like, nothing nothing. Usually I figure out about what I want before too long after I start thumbnailing and that thread leads me to the final image fairly easily. Not the case! This one required more.
The second set of thumbnails went a lot better than the first, owing probably to the week or two I took off before approaching the image again. I was still really struggling trying to figure out what I needed to show and what I wanted to show. This chapter is about Bilbo and Gollum engaged in conversation with each other. It is about Bilbo being on his own and finding the unknown at the heart of the mountain. I still wanted to show Gollum, because he is interesting. However! Bilbo is more important than Gollum, and I began to realize where the focus needed to rest. The last few thumbnails on the last page are on to something.
I figured out a pose for Gollum that I was pretty happy with, and began trying to build the scene around him, starting with Bilbo. I like doing this digitally because I don't get caught up in the details as easily and can, of course, move things about with total freedom. This didn't work out really well, because I went about it in a stupid way. I went back to my heroes of composition (largely Golden Age illustrators [largely N.C. Wyeth]) and found a particular raised horizon line that I liked. I wanted to incorporate something like that into the image and went back to pencil and paper.
All right, here we are. After a few more hiccups, I had something that was pretty close to accurate there on the middle page. I took that into the computer and started blocking in the shapes, moving things and resizing them as necessary until I had the image on the right.
As with the previous Hobbit piece, I printed out the enlarged digital thumbnail and started drawing right on it. This is printed on four pages of copy-paper, comped together at full size (about 11.25x16.5"). The drawing of Bilbo is unbelievably hilarious to me. Terrible terrible terrible. Anyway!
I gathered some reference of caves and such and sketched out some rocks for the background. I was pretty sure most of those along the edges would be blacked out, but you never know, so I drew them all in anyway.
I'm using a few different Col-Erase pencils here, which I really like. It's nice to be able to work in layers on a single drawing. The sword I drew in Bilbo's hand is really terribly angled, and I wouldn't realize that until after I drew it on the final, and changed it immediately before scanning.
Yeah! Final drawing! I blacked out a few of the rocks in this that I
knew were only going to be shown in silhouette. I had a pretty good time drawing Gollum's weird little body.
This is a little extra pencil texture to go in the background.
The flatting process. The basic flats layer is helpful for when I'm blocking in colors, and the more detailed layer is for making selections. I was playing around with a few different adjustment layers and cam across those two color examples on the bottom, which I thought were pretty neat. Neither would work for the final, obviously, but I liked them nonetheless.
I did a quick pass to figure out my values before going into the real colors. This was really helpful, and I feel pretty dumb for not doing it before now. Oh well.
Kali suggested that, and I did it because she's a genius. She also helped me out with a lot of the colors. The basic colors I went with are there on the right. The colors always get slightly changed and acquire more depth once I start to add texture and what little traditional rendering I do.
I've explained a few times what goes on in these few steps, so I won't harp on it too much. I select my flats and apply textures on a single layer above my color layer. My textures are mostly from high resolution watercolor brushes and some other custom stuff. The purple and red layers are drawn in where I think shadows should fall and are set to Multiply.
Colors are applied to some of the lines and a few more overall textures are added. The texture layer helps to make the colors a little more cohesive. The levels get adjusted and there we go!
Some details:
And a larger version of the final image for your perusal.
Thanks for reading and for following this project through its trials and tribulations. This is a difficult process, and I really appreciate the encouragement. I hope these posts are helpful.
The story has two main characters and a lot of people in the periphery. The four-armed bigface you see on pages three, four, and five is one of the main characters, though those are all pretty wrong. I was working on a different story for awhile and that ate up a lot of my time and I drew a few designs (corpses and princes) for that story which were a shame to scrap. I'm trying to incorporate a few of my favorites into the background of this one. This thing will be done by the middle of November, so hold onto your butts because I'm going to try to keep you all updated on it as it goes. It's going to be a lot of fun to draw since I populated it entirely with weirdos and monsters and maniacs.
This is the first time I've offered prints online and the first time these Hobbit prints have been available at all. This is also, I believe, the last time I will offer any prints until I buy a large-format printer (probably some time next year). All of the Hobbit prints are around 11x17", and the Transferring Risk prints are just tiny little guys.
A small birthday gift for my little cousin, who likes dinosaurs. I also like dinosaurs.
In the middle of that Naga Fireball job, I got a call from Jordan Awan at the New Yorker asking if I could turn something around really quickly for their upcoming issue. The assignment came in on Saturday afternoon with a Monday morning deadline, which was exactly when that Naga Fireball stuff was due! The time was cramped, but when I saw what the piece was about it was impossible to turn down.
The issue comes out this week.
A few miscellaneous pages from the sketchbook that I thought were kind of fun. The top are some sketches from the Naga Fireball assignment and the bottom are some severed heads surrounded by a few regular heads.
Eagles are super hard to draw. I really like stretching them out and making them almost serpentine. Still have a lot of structural stuff to learn and there are a lot of crazy shapes under all those feathers.
Sorry for the slight lapse in posting, everyone. The majority of the last week was spent holed up in my apartment frantically cracking away at a couple of things. This is one of them, a two-page spread and spot for Muse Magazine, with art directed by the World Famous John Sandford. 
The final spread, with the title text that I also drew, as well as the article.
I did a textured background for the third page of the article, which is overlaid with the spot:
Kali and I were listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks a few weeks ago while we were working. They're pretty good to work to. Don't really care for the films much, I have to say. They made a lot of bad decisions during the production phase of all those movies. Pretty fun books, though.
There are some dead guys in the story I'm currently working on, but these are more prospective, since the next story has a principal character who is a corpse. I feel like it's necessary for anyone interested in drawing fantasy or horror to know how to draw a good corpse, since it's surprising how often they pop up in stories. 
The prince isn't a major character, but he exists and so I had to draw him. When I hit the middle drawing I knew I wanted him to be a general or an admiral-- some sort of war hero and then I got distracted drawing medals and here we are.
The eagles, like the wolves (wargs) in The Hobbit have always seemed weird to me. I don't know why, but even as a kid I wasn't really ready to believe that these were talking animals. For whatever reason, despite the elves and trolls and dragons, the things that kept sticking out to me were that the birds and dogs talked. It was weird. 
Getting better...
I must apologize for the recent lapse in posting. I've been working on some things that don't have pictures yet. I'll continue to try and show some nonsense until I can post some more substance.
This is a small drawing I did for this month's issue of Plansponsor Europe (you can read the magazine on line here), art directed by Soojin Buzelli. The article was about transferring risk.
A few pages of thumbnails down and I had nothing. Like, nothing nothing. Usually I figure out about what I want before too long after I start thumbnailing and that thread leads me to the final image fairly easily. Not the case! This one required more.
The second set of thumbnails went a lot better than the first, owing probably to the week or two I took off before approaching the image again. I was still really struggling trying to figure out what I needed to show and what I wanted to show. This chapter is about Bilbo and Gollum engaged in conversation with each other. It is about Bilbo being on his own and finding the unknown at the heart of the mountain. I still wanted to show Gollum, because he is interesting. However! Bilbo is more important than Gollum, and I began to realize where the focus needed to rest. The last few thumbnails on the last page are on to something.
I figured out a pose for Gollum that I was pretty happy with, and began trying to build the scene around him, starting with Bilbo. I like doing this digitally because I don't get caught up in the details as easily and can, of course, move things about with total freedom. This didn't work out really well, because I went about it in a stupid way. I went back to my heroes of composition (largely Golden Age illustrators [largely N.C. Wyeth]) and found a particular raised horizon line that I liked. I wanted to incorporate something like that into the image and went back to pencil and paper.
All right, here we are. After a few more hiccups, I had something that was pretty close to accurate there on the middle page. I took that into the computer and started blocking in the shapes, moving things and resizing them as necessary until I had the image on the right.
As with the previous Hobbit piece, I printed out the enlarged digital thumbnail and started drawing right on it. This is printed on four pages of copy-paper, comped together at full size (about 11.25x16.5"). The drawing of Bilbo is unbelievably hilarious to me. Terrible terrible terrible. Anyway!
I gathered some reference of caves and such and sketched out some rocks for the background. I was pretty sure most of those along the edges would be blacked out, but you never know, so I drew them all in anyway.
I'm using a few different Col-Erase pencils here, which I really like. It's nice to be able to work in layers on a single drawing. The sword I drew in Bilbo's hand is really terribly angled, and I wouldn't realize that until after I drew it on the final, and changed it immediately before scanning.
Yeah! Final drawing! I blacked out a few of the rocks in this that I knew were only going to be shown in silhouette. I had a pretty good time drawing Gollum's weird little body.
This is a little extra pencil texture to go in the background.
The flatting process. The basic flats layer is helpful for when I'm blocking in colors, and the more detailed layer is for making selections. I was playing around with a few different adjustment layers and cam across those two color examples on the bottom, which I thought were pretty neat. Neither would work for the final, obviously, but I liked them nonetheless.
I did a quick pass to figure out my values before going into the real colors. This was really helpful, and I feel pretty dumb for not doing it before now. Oh well. Kali suggested that, and I did it because she's a genius. She also helped me out with a lot of the colors. The basic colors I went with are there on the right. The colors always get slightly changed and acquire more depth once I start to add texture and what little traditional rendering I do.
I've explained a few times what goes on in these few steps, so I won't harp on it too much. I select my flats and apply textures on a single layer above my color layer. My textures are mostly from high resolution watercolor brushes and some other custom stuff. The purple and red layers are drawn in where I think shadows should fall and are set to Multiply.
Colors are applied to some of the lines and a few more overall textures are added. The texture layer helps to make the colors a little more cohesive. The levels get adjusted and there we go!
And a larger version of the final image for your perusal.
Thanks for reading and for following this project through its trials and tribulations. This is a difficult process, and I really appreciate the encouragement. I hope these posts are helpful.
