Tuesday 14 October 2008

Project: Gawain (continued)





Morgana, straight from the draft of a brochure :D. This pencil sketch is tiny, but I like it very much. It determined Morgana's general look for me, and I guess it contributed to my determination to make her a nun *g*. I have discovered that I enjoy drawing veils and capes, and that they can be very flattering :).












I'm still debating whether I'll call this gentleman Myrddin or Merlin. I am rather partial to Myrddin, but there seems little point in using this Welsh name if I don't have Welsh names for each character in the story :/. It has crossed my mind to simply rename the more "classic" medieval characters, but then I remembered how much I as a reader like to find familiar names in my Round Table books...

Hm.

Still pondering the matter.

Happy with this Morgana, by the way :).





Two Gawains.

I'm very fond of his nose, it's going to be cutesy ;).

In fact it rather looks like my Ambiorix's.














With and without beard. Think black hair on the beardless Gawain's head to see the alternative version of Medraut/Mordred.

I'm trying to draw my heads smaller ever since Cecilia made a remark to me about the size of the head in proportion to the body, but I have to confess that when I draw them closer to their "real" size, they always look too small to me. Maybe that is because I have a large head and narrow shoulders myself...?



A tiny sketchie, just to get some idea about my hero's build. Of course stuff is wrong with it :P. I haven't started seriously studying anatomy yet (I should start with arms and hands, methinks), so I'm sort of trying out how far I get on my own. I know I would be better of really studying, but I haven't got the energy in weekends. Basically I need to SLEEP as much as possible, and to relax. Since I get worked up about my pictures' shortcomings, studying anatomy is *not* relaxing :/. So I keep putting it off. But I'll get to it. Seriously.

2 comments:

Cecilia said...

Please, call him Merlin! I hate when they name him Myrddin or Myridin or all the other strange forms; I have the sensation that those who use those Welsh forms are saying, "Ehi, look at me, I actually read Wikipedia and I know what the original name was, before those stoopid poets called Chrétien de Troyes and Malory destroyed everything original".

Morgana is very nice, with and without cloak and veil :)

Anatomy is a bit of a bore, espcially when you draw hundreds of the same bone with the same muscle on it, but it's worth the pain. Everything will appear more realistic when you apply your anatomical knowledge on your drawings.

ampersand said...

LOL! I trust you know that *my* inspiration is not Wikipedia XD. I also don't have a problem with Chrétien or Malory; I just happen to be very fond of the old Celtic stories too. For me it is simply a matter of deciding between the Celtic and the Medieval angle, because it is not always possible to combine the two. It makes perfect sense to me to call the characters Myrddin and Bedwyr and Gwalchmei when I am telling a story that takes place in 6th-century Goddoddin, because those are the names that fit the time and location. One of the things that annoyed me terribly about the latest King Arthur film was the fact that the knights were supposed to be Sarmatian warriors, but were still called Lancelot and Gawain and Bedivere - very Sarmatian names, eh? *rolls eyes*

So: if I tell a Celtic story, I want Celtic names. If I tell a medieval story, I want medieval names. At the moment I find it a difficult decision... I suppose I can have a bit of both if I choose to go for heroic fantasy...?

On to anatomical study, then... ;-)