self portrait experiment: fourth stage - finished

[mrlich]

Click here to jump to the original post for this experiment.
Stage Four: Touch Up/Clean Up - Yeah. I guess you could call it that, though it seems a bit deceptive. I spent another hour and a quarter on this bad boy, and I could easily spend a whole lot more on it. I'm not, but I could. Stick a fork in it, I'm calling it done (for now). I did have a lot of fun with it and I even got a little more daring at the end since Quito came in and gave me a few words of encouragement/advice. Overall, I would say (again) that the experiment was a success and I learned what I need to do to speed things up substantially. Why speed things up? Many reasons which I won't go into here, but suffice to say that if I want to make any kind of money through art, speed becomes a significant factor.

Now for my thoughts on the image itself (a critique, I guess - as though I was looking at someone else's image):

• I like the boldness of the revised inking - I really love a solid bold 'outline' to help bring objects into alignment visually. I like how significantly that helps to make things 'pop'.
• Overall I like the colors, but I think that the greens need some pretty significant help
• It needs a background, but I knew that wasn't happening since I was constricting myself time-wise
• I like that I look like me (sorta - just more beefy)
• I like that both our heads are more or less aligned - not sure what that says symbolically or whatever, but I like it
• The horns could use a LOT more detail, and I would like to rework the dragon's head a bit more (it's supposed to be based on the 'center skull' from my navigation menu)

I plan on doing some more of these in the future, though I find it strange that this project technically should have only taken me a little under 3 hours, and it feels like my whole day (except for my yummy meal out with xtingu and the boys) was dedicated to it.

Comments

[xtingu]

Dude, this was really a treat to watch. It's also really interesting to hear you talk through the process.

I think there is merit in doing this as a regular exercise. I think it'd be a neat way to get the juices flowing.

Very proud of you!

[ms-violet.livejournal.com]

Looking good. I like the idea of it not having a background because it brings out the meta-art of the image. if it's an unfinished image, does that mean there's a dragon looking over the viewer's shoulder? I like that the dragon's watching himself being drawn.