These are studies for the Toomai picture I'm currently working on. Kali Nag is the star of the show, and I wanted to give him a distinct personality. Also Indian elephants are different than African elephants--smaller ears, two humps on the head instead of one--something I never particularly paid that much attention to before. Also Indian elephants sometimes have these spots, sort of freckles on their trunks and ears, and I decided to give him these markings.
The Tiger.
In the story, there's a brief mention of Kali Nag batting an attacking wounded tiger away with his head. This is a sort of flashback, and through most of the story he's a very old elephant, and I thought this was a good opportunity to focus on what a bad ass he once was. This was also an opportunity to expand on an image that wasn't very detailed in the prose. I had to figure out tiger anatomy, and so I did a few studies to get a better sense of it so I could put the tiger in action. I found some actual footage of a tiger attacking an elephant rider on Youtube which was helpful. I also have an excellent book on animal anatomy, Goldfinger's Animal Anatomy for artists.
Beautiful Animal studies....cannot wait to see the final colored piece..love the inked layout below! Marvelous!! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Tin. Color adds a lot of volume. In the process of scanning in new watercolor textures this weekend, so I hope to put it together soon.
ReplyDeleteThat's some beautiful and elegant line work, Jed.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteTiger faces are great! Did you do screen captures of the youtube video for reference? The one in the middle is really cool.
ReplyDeleteI don't "get" life drawing / anatomy. It's like Shakespeare to me, I just don't get what the appeal is, to draw it or to study it or to admire it. Only if a figure is truly unique, like Dali's Crucifix painting or something like that. only then do I sit up and take notice of "the human form". I much prefer the elephants and tigers! I'm just rambling here, not suggesting or requesting that you switch gears. I know I'm some crazy weirdo who does not appreciate figure drawings like normal people do.
Nice job on the studio! How long does it last? When I give my studio a good sprucing up like that, it takes about a month for chaos to reclaim it.
See ya!
basically it comes down to this, Mark: I just want to learn how to draw people good. I don't really put much value on the figure drawings themselves. It's all practice to me. Not that I don't appreciate a good figure drawing or painting! I'm totally down. But these are just exercises.
ReplyDeleteThe animals are a good time though. Most of this stuff is invented from a bunch of different images, but I did have some very helpful screen captures of the Youtube video. The video fortunately ends before the tiger actually makes contact with the guy, and I don't want to know what happened to him. Coloring the bigger scene (finished inks on a previous post) at the moment.