The Society Of Illustrators (edit)

(detail)

Digital is such an intuitive medium. If you think of something, oh that would be cool if, you just do it and see what it looks like. If you did the same thing in watercolor you'd have to start over most times. Not to say one is inferior or superior, just different ways and means to tell the story. And the story or feeling is what moves people.

I'm still learning the medium. I spent college working with oils and watercolors and didn't start doing anything serious with digital til the very end of my senior year and I'd caution people to do something similar. For me, I needed the understanding and framework I was able to gather from oils especially. It would have been a lot easier to get caught up in the medium, rather than understanding colors and compistion and what is going to make a good painting.

With this piece, it took a long time to go from idea to sketch to finished. I spent a long time gathering reference for all sorts of birds (you can see earlier posts for more on this) and spent quite a while developing what I wanted. The ideas went through lots of changes and seemed like each one I came up with had about 5 rabbit trails, which was good but also drove me insane.

In the end I settled on a parade of sorts which evolved into the battle. The Final March.

Couched deep within The Blue Goblet mythology, the The Final March of Queen Anatolia, recounts the long forgotten myth of the Great Beast in the Second Great War for The Blue Goblet.

(original sketch)

The Final March of Queen Anatolia in the Second Great War for The Blue Goblet

(detail)

(detail)

(screen shot)

(detail)

All's well that ends well, or some old thing like that. To be mailed off to S.I. in NYC this Friday and we'll just see.

Here's hoping.