am almost done with the black and white portion of Raja. I have decided to call it "The Interrupted Drink". I will be coloring the eyes and adding subtle color throughout the rest of the board as well. I have added more water drops and toned down the chest area as well. I still have some 'tweeking' to do in a few areas, but overall the black and white scratching is close to complete. I have deviated from my photo reference a moderate amount and gone off of a vision in my head, which is not always a good idea. At times the way it looks in my head is not how it turns out, but overall I am fairly pleased with the result so far. I chose to add the water to add more visual interest to the work as well as tell more of a story than just a tiger head portrait.
Curious how the water drops are done? Here is a closer look:
Often (almost always) when I am planning on coloring a piece I do it first in photoshop to see how I want to get it to look. It helps me also figure out what colors of ink I will need to mix up, and how strong or diluted I want them to be. In this case Raja actually has quite a lot of light reddish brown fur on his face and around some of his stripes. I will use the ink quite diluted for these areas, as I don't want to overpower the white. I will ink, then re scratch several layers. So while the photoshop version won't be exactly how the color version will end up being it does give me a good idea of where I am going and the colors I will need to get there. Here is my photoshop mock up of Raja with colored eyes and fur.
Often when coloring a work you need to scratch it lighter than if you were going to leave it a black and white work. I can now tell from my mock up in photoshop a few areas that I will need to take lighter than I have them too (such as the chest that I just darkened :D) (and the green in the background I am not sure about yet, we'll see)
