After taking nearly two months off this piece in order to finally finish my SFAU series of 36 images, I finished the line drawing stage. I used my orignal, front on, concept sketch to create a 3D version. The hardest part was the weird, ornate nose. Very difficult to place it so it comes out from the eyes, while also partially obscuring one. Bats also have bizarre, uuuuuh, organs in their ears as well. I’ll tinker with those more in the color phase. Even if a line drawing looks good to the eye now, once I start adding shading mistakes become more visible. I’m certain my perspective is off, but it looks passibly good, especially for a non-illustrator/animator. I may be biased.
Originally, she was going to be a more ambitious image, but now I’m going to hammer out the image as a lighting, shading, modeling and color study, which I think is difficult enough. And is it just me, or is she kinda’ pretty? Not sure if I’ll run with that or make her more scary or grotesque, or someplace in between. I will try to downplay what I see as a little bit of a Disney feel to her. I think making the whites of the eyes dark, as in the concept sketch, might go a long way to neutralizing the cartoon quality of the eyes.
This looks rather like a pencil or charcoal drawing, but it’s digital. I’m using a drawing tablet, so it’s much more awkward to make curved lines and such than drawing on paper. And I’m looking at the screen and drawing in my lap. One day I’ll get a graphics tablet, and then I can draw directly on the screen. It will make things a whole lot easier and the results will be more elegant, combing the best of both approaches. You lose a lot of finesse when using a drawing tablet, but the computer gives way more editing power.
Next is the base color stage. This is not my normal way of working, or rather one of my more usual approaches. It’s something I’m trying to learn in order to broaden my skills.
~ Ends
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Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
I don’t know if I would use the term pretty, but she really isn’t scary, but maybe that’s because I like bats! I can’t wait to see how she progresses, very creative!
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I don’t find her scary either, except may with the eye colors, but she might get a big scarier in the painting process. Thanks!
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