The Hippie Project - Finished

Top o' the month to yas!

   I am back! Phew, one rough test week over... I've had some extra time to kill, so finally I actually got something done, which is indeed my latest project. However, before presenting you guys the final work, I want to show something.. For the past ten weeks, I've been in this black and white themed art class basically just to improve on my still-life drawing skills so that one day I can make it to a good arts college - hopefully.
    I got about 4 pieces started, but this was the only one I finished and which I thought was worth showing. My first work with charcoal AND on an easel. Looks different from my other works huh? It was a shock to me too. Basically this was just an exercise on contrasts and selective detail which I found quite intriguing. On top of all this, I was working a huge surface, very difficult for me as a beginner in a traditional art sense. Anyways, this castle will go into my portfolio until something better comes up and saves the day.



    Alright, now that I am done with my castle, we can get to the good stuff. This is what I started with yesterday evening. I had to spray more white onto the canvas again, I didn't feel like the picture wasn't really coming together quite yet, frankly I still don't believe they do. 

     It has to be said, the eagle was a tough one. This is the first time I'm drawing a bird let alone an eagle. I found the feathers the most difficult to do and I found out too late that I couldn't find good shades of brown for the feathers and my extra fine white marker was acting up, creating a mess all over the canvas. What can I say, I gave it my best shot anyway.

    After spraying more clouds on the canvas, I still felt that the picture was just not coming together like I wanted it to, so I decided to add some cloud action wrapping around the letters and the totem pole, hoping that would do the trick.

    I guess it did help a bit, not too much though. At this point I got heavily frustrated and brought the blue spray can into action and limited the cloud action around the totem pole. I can't say I'm too happy with the result, maybe the reason to my problems is that it has taken me too long to finish it and I just lost my 'mojo'. Anyways, I managed to finish the graffiti part last night, which was a relief.

     I've been mulling about with the totem pole for ages, I just cannot find away to blend it into the picture. Clouds, fades, shadows; it just won't work. I may have gone wrong with setting the REZ too close to it, putting the whole picture out of balance.

    Here's the finished eagle. This bugger I finished today during the afternoon. The feathers were difficult to implement in, so i just thought I wouldn't put too much effort into details, just make it somewhat 'feathery'. 

And voila! I present to you, the finished canvas as a whole - I do apologize about the lighting, I was too late to catch the natural sunlight as in the morning.  

All in all, I am glad to see this project going into the archive and not to be further tampered. From this point onwards, it is only for you to decide whether it works or if it doesn't, I'm just looking forward to moving on to the next project. Got to start mulling about on that one...