Some Pencils.

The holidays are over, and thus my last best excuse for not doing artwork has evaporated.  What follows are the (nearly) completed pencils for the first page of House of Asterion.  You can read the script, found in the first post, but the images are a bit abstracted and meant to be introductory.  Again, the panelling here is modeled on the Golden Rectangle.

Obviously the values of the first panel dominate this image, but when I get to the next stage, I hope to push the patterns further into the background and soften them with color.  Very few of the dark areas will be inked, and I'm mostly envisioning the first panel in a sort of David Mack style mixed media/watercolor.  The following panels I hope to turn into moody little esoteric looking Mignola-esque tiles.

I am rather proud of how this first panel turned out, and although most of the pattern work will be covered with text boxes, I think it really grabs the eye, and helps push it to the second panel.  The lettering is mostly Greek:  the first band of letters (moving inward from the human figure) is the ancient Greek word for Minotaur, followed by its Etruscan counterpart (the Etruscans apparently had a less villainous characterization of the Minotaur in their belief system).  The next band in is the ancient Greek for 'Asterion,' and the last band displays the Greek for 'monster,' and the modern Greek for 'man' (because the ancient Greek word wouldn't fit).

So.  With that step done, it's on to page 2, which, if all goes as planned, should be very different but hopefully as visually interesting.  I've got it mapped out already, but I won't know if it works until I put real effort into a finished pencil draft.

Additionally, I've been toying the idea with creating panelled art pieces -- sort of pop-arty -- like a page torn from a comic book that doesn't exist (or doesn't exist YET.)  I'm always interested in the ways that not traditional comic book artists blur the lines between an art piece and a cover or page of comic.  Maybe one of these pages will end up like that, or perhaps something from the superhero stuff that's been gestating in my brain for years now.

We'll see.

As for my next post, which I hope to have ready in a span of time that does not at all resemble the interval between this and the last post, I may throw some sketches of some superhero redesigns I've been playing with, just to mix it up a bit.  Fingers crossed.

Ok, coffee break's over.  Everyone back on your heads.

-P