I've chosen one of my sketches to refine and stretched it to fit an 8x10in 300dpi document. I actually sketch over the drawing three times, each time refining the drawing even further. I was searching for a general design and movement to the piece and wanted to play with the idea I found in the sketch -to have white (or lighter) shapes against black (or darker) shapes, and vice versa.
It was also at this stage where I defined where the eye level would be. With the help of perspective-fu*, this helped me place the environment inside a believable space.
Because I had the luxury to do so, I left the sketch overnight to allow myself a fresh view of it the following day.
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This next one is a result of my playing around with some values and colors underneath the sketch. I set the sketch to multiply and move it to a layer above the color. I also save this out as a separate document and reduce the dpi by half to save file space. When I settle on a direction with color, value, lighting, etc, I'll take the color information back to my original sketch to finish it with.
You'll notice I changed things around on this color comp. Just as with the sketch, I set it aside overnight night to get a fresh view of it the following day.
In the original drawing, I noticed the figures were a little to small to my liking. I adjusted their scale. The items in the foreground didn't seem to flow very well in relationship to one another (and to the composition as a whole) so I started moving them around too.
I pulled out one of my compositional grids to help me figure out what to do with them. I knew that something wasn't working well, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I think this helped quite a bit, but I'm not 100% sold on it yet. I'll probably keep playing around with it all the way to the end.
The goal is really to try and solve as many problems as I can in the early stages of the painting. I still anticipate quite a few hurdles as I go along, but at least the problems I've addressed now won't (hopefully) come back to haunt me later.
*The ancient martial art of showing a painting or drawing who's boss
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