First off - I've actually done a ton of stuff. It's just that Tumblr feels less permanent than Blogger, so I tend to post there more, but even then I don't post there all that often. CONTINUING: So, quite a few of my cards are based off of friends of mine. Not all of them, or even most of them, but if people ask for drawings, I can kill two birds with one stone usually by making a card for them. I asked one of my best friends from art school what monster she would be if she could be any monster, and she said "gorgon." After looking it up, I realize that she meant a Medusa. It's like saying you want to be a lycanthrope instead of a wolf-man. Still, it's not like I DON'T spend a lot of my time on Wikipedia.
So I pretty much immediately drew it for her so I could have her birthday/christmas present at the ready when they came around. That's the top drawing. It felt like it was lacking in life, and I almost immediately disliked it. While I like the feathers in the snake quaff, and I thought the red snakes matched the overall warmness of the figure, I thought overall the picture was lacking any real appeal. I worked quite a while on it too. It's a good lesson to always make the step where you nail everything down the most important one. Otherwise you spend hours on a picture that ends up just not being that good.
The second pass was more recent. Maybe two weeks ago? I was pretty excited about giving it to her, but when I was about to pass it along, I felt the colors were way too flat, and that the centerpiece of the picture only popped out because she looked neon. She looks sort of backlit, which is a neat effect, but not one I wanted here. I went back into PaintToolSAI and flattened the shading layer onto the flats, and decided to just paint the tones directly on with a more textured brush. When I finally brought it into a photo editor for final touches, I realized that the picture was still lacking in texture, and that the character was no longer popping out. So, I grabbed some of the textures I had lying around and added them to the background and statues. I decided to make them warmer, also. I decided to cool down the character to make her contrast with the background a little more. She still recedes a little more than I'd like, but she's a monster and thematically I like her having a sheen of blue to her. Can you tell I had the most fun drawing the snakes?
