Wednesday 30 December 2015

In the bag

Following on from my last post, I did finally finish my illustration for Sean Walters story 'An Invited Guest'. It's now available to buy printed with the tale in my Etsy shop


This was an interesting piece to work on - featuring a non traditional representation of death as a dark figure, his features hidden beneath a sack. I wanted the image to have an overall recognisably human shape but with a touch of otherness so I built a foam skull, working from a deer skull I had. I added suitably pointed teeth and covered it with the sack.


 To create a dark image, I photographed the piece in a black mirror so only the highlights would show. A lamp picked out the fine details such as the wispy beard I had given him.


 The drawing itself was done in charcoal and carbon on watercolour paper. I got through a lot of carbon on that background :) The finer details were picked out with a knife blade.



Now framed, I'm quite pleased with the overall effect - I've also gone on to do a lot more photography using that mirror. More on that in my next post. The image itself reveals more the longer you look at it. I exhibited it at this years Dark Arts show as part of the Bram Stoker International Film Festival.