Continuing a Project

So, I couldn't shake my "Monster Farm" idea, which I have since re-named, but I will save that for another post.  It also struck me, after visiting the Delaware Art Museum, that studies made for larger more detailed projects (sometimes in a different medium) can be important as stand-alone sketches as well as preliminary steps to a larger project.

So, I started off with my monster sketch.  I liked how this came out.  I made this sketch from a broader more abstract idea, but I thought about adapting a pre-existing photo as a second sketch.

Then I moved on to this.  I am a sucker for going to a bookstore and getting a book that costs too much money on the whim I could use it for an art project.  So, I picked up a book on the photography of Dorothea Lange, who I also mentioned in a previous post.  I knew I wanted to adapt this photo in some way.

Migrant Mother

Here is what I took from it.  I did a quick reference sketch of it to get some of the proportions and make a list of things that I wanted to bring over into my version of the image, namely a look of desperation, averted eyes, the act of a worried almost pulling of the face.  I wanted to make it "monstrous" in some way, so I started making the woman into a spider-like creature.

I even started drawing the actual drawing on watercolor paper.

The problem was, I did not like where this was going.  I wasn't feeling the spider-woman skin texture, and I was unclear as to what I was going for with the hair.  So, I figured, let me do another sketch, this time even quicker, but with black brush pen.  There is something about the finality and permanence of black ink that changed the dynamic of doing a sketch.  Oddly, it does not make me hesitant because it is permanent, in fact, it almost makes me more bold to get things down in black and white.  Here is what I came up with.

Went for similar proportions and composition, but I went furry instead of arachnid, which I think matched up with my first Monster Farm sketch also.  So, then I basically started over, this time with pencils on watercolor paper.

And here a B&W and Sepia tone dual shot like my first monster sketch.

Not exactly sure where this project is going, but I could expanding it, redoing the sketches I have already done and working on bigger paper.