Wednesday 15 August 2012

Make Way for the King – WIP 6


Today I’ve been trying to address the niggling feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the kings pose. I was happy with his body but his head and face just kept niggling at me.
At first I thought that the massive helm was making his head look small so I fleshed him out a little, lifted his chin, gave him a beard and then realised that I’d created a freakish beach ball headed creature that I will not be posting! At this paint, I swore a bit, went to get a cup of tea and generally had a strop for a while before returning to the drawing board with fresh eyes.
The only solution that I could see was to start over. I went through my source photos looking for pictures of the kings helm and neck plate and luckily found a couple lying around that gave me a better idea of the shape and design. I then completely deleted the original head, brought the tabard into his neck and started from scratch. The result is not finished but I’m much happier with him now that he’s far more upright and I can move onto getting some detail into the final knight and banner bearer.

(The little lion in the bottom left corner is a template I created for the rampant lions on the kings tabard… I suppose I shouldn’t leave him there, how messy of me!)

2 comments:

  1. This is turning into quite a marathon for you isn't it Tessa :-)

    Comparing the 'before and after' I think you've cracked it with this new head ... he is looking up now and seems more determined. Previously he was looking down and seemed less 'kingly'

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Sue :-)

    Yep, this one is taking a little longer than I was expecting but I think I've broken the back of it now. The problem with working with source photos is that sometimes I follow them too closely. The knights tend to plod in their armour because it's soooo heavy which is why in the first version the kings head was angled down. I'm much happier with the "idealised" version :-)

    ReplyDelete