Friday, April 13, 2007

Tea Merchant character design - in color!




Since I liked the sketch of this character (see previous post for rough sketch), I wanted to commit him to paper in a more permanent fashion. I inked him first with a crow quill (yes, I prefer inking the old-fashioned way) and then colored him with acrylic mixed with a whole lot of matte medium.

I was looking at some older DiTerlizzi work - a D&D Monstrous Compendium, full of character designs just before I painted this one. I like how finished his work looks, but when you study it closely, you can see that it's probably done fairly quickly. I always admire the energy apparent in works that are completed rapidly - especially since I'm one who tends to spend way too much time scrubbing away at a painting. I know a very complete painting can often be accomplished without laboring for hours on end and over-working it - I'm just not so good at accomplishing this myself, but I'm working on it!

Anyway, it was really fun to use a technique different from my usual and this painting really did go pretty fast. I've started working on the second Tea Merchant painting (again, see previous post) and am trying to keep with this 'don't over-work it' theme. We'll see how it goes...

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