Almost right off the bat I knew what I wanted to do, a pentagram. Is there anything so evocative of the occult arts than a good old fashioned pentagram? They seems so versatile, on the floor in salt, on the walls in blood, they can spruce up anywhere and transform a humble home into your very own ritual slaughterhouse fun for all the family and their dismembered corpses! Ok I kid, I kid, but it made sense with all the objects I was using in the main figure illustration that I could construct an evil pentagram and splash some blood around Sin City style (by that I mean it'll be white because I'm too lazy and broke to do more than a one colour print). I wanted to use the horns I originally planned to use on the satanic chic, which are actually from an Indian Black Buck (google dat), until I realised that they wouldn't fit and had to change them to Elk antlers, the Tibetan prayer dagger, feather from the crow and a bone. Just missing out was the candle, but I figure I used it on the patch/sticker artwork so it got it's due.
Above you can see some very small and very early sketches where I was just putting down some ideas on paper so I don't forget what the hell I was thinking because I have a memory like a fucking pasta strainer. They are very rough but you can see I already had the main idea, I just had to flesh it out properly, and that's where it gets interesting (and difficult and annoying and frustrating). I usually have a solid idea from the get go, I think it's because that's the bit that excites me the most and I get all jumpy about the potential of such a rad idea, but then generally fall into a black hole of despair when I realise I'm nowhere near the skill level needed to pull of whatever crazy shit is running round my head.
Here is the first actual size sketch, I wanted to do it actual size so I could cram in as much detail in as possible, well as much as I could I'm not Aaron Horkey. You can see which sketch I went with from the ones above, but some of the details aren't fully realised yet, like the dagger and the text around the outside. Getting there I guess.
Much better dagger (had to actually do some proper research on that) and bell in the centre. Fixed up the bone a bit too.
Tracing off some steez, when the paper gets too wrecked I'd much rather get the best lines off it and start fresh, no use fucking around with a messed up sheet of paper. You can see how messy I really draw too (on the right) and how much better it looks on the right once I've gotten the best lines traced onto a new sheet.
Started inking EVERYTHING, unlike the main shirt design (which was actually done after this) I inked everything in the design. The only photoshopping I did was to level out the colours to make it nice and contrast...y, the blacks BLACK and the whites SPARKLING MOTHER FUCKERRR. I start by blocking out all the easy stuff and then cutting into the lines and adding detail. The horns were the biggest pain in the ass, trying to balance the amount of black and white but still keep some texture in there, but not too much detail because then they would look out of place with the rest of the objects. Headaches.
Snacks are necessary people, keep snackified by keeping up your regular snack intake to avoid being low in your crucial snack level. Every year thousands of illustrators, artists and designers DIE from a severe lack of snacks. Don't let it happen to you.
He likes to 'help'.
I'll be back with Pt. 2 of the Process Steez posts very soon. Stay tuned.
Cheers
Roh
That's not a snack, that's health food. Hehe. On the more important side of things, it's just so great to see some decent drawing skills going down. In this day and age of computer generated art, there is not nearly enough of it in circulation.
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