I've probably said this before (but I really can't be bothered re-reading all my BS) but the main idea behind all these collections is to have each based on a concept that everyone can relate to on some level. The first collection was TOIL, something we should all be familiar with as we all work so much (except for those stupid lame ass hipsters!) just to keep our heads above water and our asses out of debt. After realising how much time, effort and money I would have to put into this thing to keep it going, and realising all the things I would have to forgo I thought SACRIFICE was as good a theme as any. Everyone can relate to the idea of having to go without one thing to get another, making small sacrifices for the greater good.
Now that I had a theme I needed to brainstorm how I was going to illustrate this sucker, I was really interested in exploring the darker side of things and did a lot of looking and reading about different types of sacrifice, mostly 'human' sacrifice, coz it's all evil and dark and spooky and shit. As well as the cultural references I was also on the lookout for the type of art and illustration I wanted to reference technique wise, I knew what I wanted to do but I still needed to work out exactly how I was gonna do it. Below is a very small selection of some of the reference material I collected on my internet travels. It's always good when your reference material contains lots of naked chics. Just sayin'.
Next step was sketching up a storm, trying not to get nailed down (ha) to anything too specific, it's more a bout just throwing ideas onto the page. I'm not really that good visualising things in my stupid brain, so doing a bunch of little sketches is a good way to record everything and experiment. I looked at a lot of pin ups as well, but ultimately I want these illustrations to have the look of a pin up, a beautiful girl as the centre piece, but remove the cheesiness. I didn't want to just draw a hot girl in a pin up pose and slap some skulls around her and call it a day, that's just lazy. I wanted to have more of a sense of the scene and what was exactly what was happening. Part of that is the lighting, but I'll get to that later...
Check out some of these sketches I spewed forth from my drawing hole, this was back at the very beginning when I wasn't even sure if I wanted her to be standing, sitting, leaning or whatever. These were just straight up imagination, with no real pose reference, when I pick what I want then I'll get some anatomy references (ie naked chics) together to give it a bit more realism.
Ok this is more like it, using various references I concocted (in my cauldron) the idea of either having the girl be the sacrifice-ee or the sacrifice-er. I think having the girl the one in charge doing the dirty work is definitely better than the damsel in distress cliche, so lets get to the cutting!!!
By this point I've started to pull in ideas for details to better get the idea of SACRIFICE down, there's druid stuff that references how the druids were quite in tune with nature like antlers and animal skins, Biblical stuff like big old books, snakes, Occult stuff like symbols, cloaks, skulls and other ideas creeping in. Note the victim draped over the altar, he was in there for a while until I decided that the composition would be to tall. Lucky guy.
That's enough for now, next it's onto the final sketch and tightening up the details, which ends up taking forever. urgh. Plenty more to come I promise.
Cheers
Roh
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