Finishing this drawing was an adventure. I don't even remember when I started it, but between working on other projects, running into one obstacle after another, and just putting it off, it's taken me most of 2014 to finish. But it's also been a great learning experience.
I probably set some kind of personal record for the most things I had to learn how to do in order to finish the drawing: Scales and wings, for starters. I finally had to learn to set up three-point perspective to solve what looked like pose/anatomy issues. And then there are the inks (more on that later).
It wasn't supposed to be a huge project; it started out as a more generic "character strikes cool pose" drawing to use up a piece of Bristol board. I felt like she needed a reason to have her hand up like that, so I added the dagger. But the pose didn't lend itself well to an impending stabbing, so I added the hand in the foreground and came up with the title to explain what she was doing. I love when drawings and paintings imply a bit of story, and this one sort of fell into my lap.
There are a few things I'm not happy with. The perspective and anatomy on the arm aren't great, and the head's not much better. I should have included them in the three-point setup. It dawned on me too late that I'd left the viewer staring right up at the gryphon's armpit, and the fur/talon transistion there is awkward. The character doesn't really even read as a gryphon, since her legs and tail are out of frame.
The biggest disappointment is the inks. I haven't inked traditionally in a while, and I was trying to use a brush and nib pen instead of my usual microns, so the linework is rather shaky. I used white paint to fix the worst of it. It's not as awful as it seemed at the time, but it's not great either.
At any rate, I'm content with the drawing overall. It was fun to draw (if not to ink), I learned a lot, and despite its flaws it's still an improvement over my previous work.
Also see this image on deviantArt.
This image is tagged with: 2014, anthro, gryphon, inked, and lineart.
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