Based on feedback I received, I’m posting about the progress of “Wanderlust." This is the preliminary drawing and although it takes longer to make a first draft, I need to give myself permission to fail. Before this, I think I did around 20-30 or so really rough pen thumbnails/sketches where I tried to decide on the format, rhythm and composition. I decided on the vertical format. In the case of this drawing, the anchor point is the foot on the ground and I tried to push the energy away from there and sweep in from the left side background through to the right.
I’m also trying to figure out where the negative space should be and how to balance that with detail. In this case I failed and it didn’t feel stable enough, mainly because the bottom right corner should be more grounded. I was trying to make it look as though it was disintegrating in a flurry of leaves. I was also deciding where the main horizontal, vertical and diagonals would be. It’s also really hard to arrange the owls in nice groups, so I needed to practice that and see how it would turn out- I try to connect them together and think of them as rhythmic additions to the overall feel.
I added a lot of detail because I know that I can always transfer it to the final piece and it’s not wasted effort.
I’ll post the next step soon which will be the final drawing linework, and talk about the changes. Hope you found this helpful.