The Snake Charmer

I've been doing a lot of practice stuff these days, but a neat little idea hit me and I couldn't resist the urge to do a real image anymore.

Now, I haven't really been doing any character work, and the backgrounds I have been practicing have been nothing like this one, so you probably won't see much improvement yet. But it was a nice break for me, that's for sure! Makes a good excuse to give a little update as well.

The main focus of this practice break I'm taking isn't exactly improvement per se, though I certainly hope that comes along as well. Mostly I'm just trying to figure out how I want to do things. I'm spending time studying backgrounds and other such details to find out a good way of doing them so I can just reproduce them whenever I need to without spending hours stressing and wondering how the hell I'm going to produce a certain effect.

While I've still got a lot of work to do, so far it seems to be working fairly well. I find myself spending less time staring at the page stumped and more time actually painting.

I've also got myself some new tools to aid in drawing, particularly with perspectives. You can see a little demo of that in this picture here. My main problem before was that my drawing surface was too small. Often times, vanishing points need to be quite far off the page, but I was drawing on a clipboard. I've now got a really big surface for drawing on, and will soon have a larger ruler to make proper use of it. I still need to learn exactly how to do all this perspective stuff, but it's already made quite a difference. Expect improvement on my indoor scenes in the near future!

I've got a good handle on most outdoor scenes now and have a start on indoor scenes. I plan on spending a bit of time working on characters soon, and plan on dipping into some colour theory stuff. It'll be a little while before I'm ready to get back to proper work, but I might start doing a little something once the new year rolls around. Those of you who have wanted reference sheets from me might have something to start looking forward to. Maybe.

Anywho... fox boy snake charmer living up to his title, and charming a snake. Random idea. Back to the grindstone for me, but if you like what you see, let me know your thoughts!