Doing The Elf

Right-o.

So there's this commission that's waaaaaaaaay overdue now (sorry Richard!). I've put it off again and again and it's time to get cracking on it. Fair enough, I took it on just before we moved house and had son #3 and in the ensuing chaos, thought it justifiable that I was late delivering this piece. But that was about 18 months ago now (!).

Richard's been great about waiting for so long without so much as a complaint. But a deal's a deal and it's time to uphold my end. So here we go.

It's not that I haven't done anything at all about this Sylvan Elf & His Horse commission piece, I have. Not being a huge fantasy geek, I've looked up reference material for elves, horses and forests and done sketch after sketch trying to get myself into the right headspace for this (note that I know it sounds like I made this monumental effort over this weekend, but in truth I've been researching and sketching in dribs and drabs on and off for the last 18 months - GAK!). And now, finally, after pages and pages of sketches trying to make headway with this and ending up spinning my wheels and going nowhere, I finally hit a pose I think is strong enough for this piece. The sketch is presented below (click for a larger version). I quite like it and will use it as the basis for the next stage - blue lining!


Note the seam line running across the drawing. I actually originally meant for it to be a landscape-orientation piece ending at just below the belt line and as such, I had ended up drawing it right to the end of the paper. But I liked the pose so much, I decided to try extending it to a full figure to see if it would work. So I taped another piece of paper below it and continued drawing. Hence the seam.

Sketched in 2B mechanical pencil on marker paper. Black border done with a Pilot V Signature series pen.

Phew. OK, so figured out the elf ...now to figure out how to pose the dang horse...