Satyr Slayer WIPs

Here are the 'in progress' images for my Satyr Slayer image. I was trying a new technique of colouring in black and white first and then using an overlay layer to colour the image. I ended up using a few other layers as well as the overlay by itself was too dull. You might be able to notice that I skwed it half way through... it was really weird. I flip my images horizontally to check for mistakes (usually there are a lot of symmetry issues and things like that) but this time the whole image was skewed and I had to skew it quite severly to get it to look normal again. I may have been drawing this from an angle, I hope that's all it is and not some sign that my vision is skewed..

It wasn't very popular in the poll at concept art and I didn't receive any really critical feedback (kind comments for sure!) . I think I the creature was a bit too generic and didn't really fit into the storybook/fantasy nature of the satyrs. Oh well, I'll just have to try again :)

I think this time I'm going to go back to whatever style of colouring feels natural and see if there's any improvement.

C.O.W. #160 Satyr Slayer

My entry to this week's C.O.W. Photoshop.

Description: A Satyr Slayer is a creature that slays Satyrs. I'll post a pic for those who are not familliar with the word. The Satyr Slayer should probably look like it inhabits an environment where Satyrs would dwell. Mostly they live in forests, woodlands and grassy glens. Satyrs are fairly pleasant creatures on the whole. Given to hunting with bow and arrows, playing the pan flute, drinking too much, getting rowdy, and knocking boots. (Or in their case -- hooves.) The Satyr Slayer should probably look pretty mean. Bit of a killjoy, perhaps. Maybe they get irritated because Satyrs always look like they're having such a good time.

My Description: The satyr slayer was a vicious demon set on the satyrs by Hades. Their noisy merrymaking infuriated Hades and after his polite but stern knocking on the roof of the underworld were ignored, Hades sent up on of his most effective means of pest control. The satyrs tried to fight back with their enchanted weapons but their fighting skills were hindered by the vast amounts of wine they had consumed. The satyrs were subdued and Hades returned to doing his evil deeds in peace.

I was pretty happy with where the black and white versions of this were going, but I felt pretty disappointed with the results of the colour. It has muddy black outlines I've noticed before in other people's work, I think I could have eliminated that and improved the details with more time but I don't think this is the image I want to spend more time on though. I'm taking too long anyway, need to speed up a bit.

Kind of off topic, I browsing back through the Nibru meme thread and saw Andrew Jone's awesome picture, then followed a link to his website where I found he has a poster of 1000 self portraits he's done (he draws a self portrait every day). I feel incredibly lazy now, and niave for hoping that I could oneday reach that level without that kind of committment. It's given me some inspiration to get a proper timetable together though and start drawing seriously.