With all of my planning done, I was ready to start drawing my Triptych for the heavenly blade Cerulean. I had the image in my head of what I wanted my final outcome to look like; a drawing of a glowing sword in a dark forest, with two darker pictures of trees and plants on either side, each making up one image.
I started off by splitting my canvas into 3 parts and very roughly sketching out what things I wanted to include in each section. I started with the middle, as it was the most important; I wanted to include the sword and kyubi alone here, as the focal points of the piece. I considered hierarchy in the composition of this drawing; I wanted the sword to be high up, so that it drew attention; I wanted to communicate to the audience that the sword is the most important thing in the piece. I surrounded the sword with some glowing spheres, as in my story it states that kyubi was lead to the sword by them. I also wanted to guide the viewer’s eyes toward the middle, so I tried making everything point toward the sword; Kyubi is facing it, the ground leads up to it and the trees point to it. I also wanted the sword to be positioned in a way where it could illuminate everything around it. There isn’t much difference between the left and right sides of the image; they both just depict trees pointing toward the sword. I made the trees bare with no leaves to add a sense of wilderness and lifelessness to the forest, as it’s meant to be a dangerous place; I also added some wild growths such as mushrooms, rocks in the front and a vine in the top left.With the basic composition worked out, I sketched in some details. I decided to change the spheres around the sword to fairies/sprites, to add a sense of magic and mysticism to the blade. I also added some flowers close to the sword; I wanted to contrast the flowers, which are delicate and full of life, to the dead and naked trees and wildlife around them, as the sword is a heavenly object; I wanted to indicate that even in a demonic forest, things like fairies and flowers are naturally attracted to the sword. I added some danger tape to the foreground as I felt the forest needed a little something extra to make it look threatening, and I added some spikes to the vines. With my sketching done, I was ready to clean it up and add some line art.Before adding line art, however, I wanted to work out how the lighting in the forest would look. I wanted the sword to be the only real source of light, emitting a dazzling gleam that illuminated the rest of the forest. In the story the light is bright enough to be seen all the way from the kingdom, and so I had to make sure it was as bright as I could make it. The sword lights up everything close to it, including kyubi and the trees; It really does look heavenly. I added a little glow to the mushrooms, as I felt this would be a nice touch and stop all the dark colours from blending together; I wanted to provide the audience’s eyes with a break from the darkness.Next, I added my line art. I didn’t change much from the sketch, but as a small detail, all of the grass points upwards toward the sword. I think this was a small and effective detail in guiding the viewer’s eyes toward what was important in the piece. I also sized the sword up a little, as I pictured it as massive and glowing. I added my base colours to the piece, working mostly with shades of brown. I wanted everything to look dark in contrast to the sword, so I tried to avoid any especially vibrant colours. I used a gradient in the sky, as I feel gradients can help things to look a bit less flat. I used the same colour for the fairies and the mushrooms, as I felt that this somewhat linked them and made them both look magical.When I finished colouring them, I used a dark blue colour on a low opacity to add a dark tint to the piece, making it feel more like night time and a bit more ominous. I erased the tint from the most important objects; Kyubi, the fairies and the sword, so that they were a little brighter and stood out amongst everything else.Lastly, I added the light, which tied everything together in my opinion. It added some contrast between the soft and bright icy colouring of the light and the darker tone of the sky. I decided to have the light touch everything in the piece, adding it’s tint to everything around it and in a way giving it’s life to everything. I also added some stars, as I felt the sky needed just a little more detail. The light illuminates each section of the drawing; If you saw the left or right parts alone, you’d wonder where the light was coming from, drawing your attention to the dazzling heavenly blade Cerulean. I added some subtle dark shadows to each corner of the piece, to add more contrast between the light and it’s dark surroundings.
I wanted to communicate as much to the viewer as I could without them knowing the full story; I feel like just from looking, you can infer that the character has entered a dangerous place and found a magical sword. You can also infer that the sword has been left untouched and abandoned for a while due to the damage on it, and that it won’t be left alone much longer because someone has discovered it. The sword being in the stone reminds me of the story of king Arthur and the Excalibur, and I feel that this is effective; that story is well known and is about a chosen one discovering a fabled sword, which is similar to my story. The similarity will help people to make inferences about the scene, although it was unintentional.
Overall, I’ve enjoyed this project and it gave me a chance to challenge myself, use research and create a piece of art that I feel proud of. I feel that the earlier stages were really useful; I did go back and revisit things that I took note of earlier for this drawing, such as the effects that lighting has on the mood of a piece, the use of smaller details, art styles that inspired me and composition’s effect on art.
Although I’ve finished the tasks that were set to me, I really like the story I came up with and I want to create some small animations to accompany the drawing. I’ll start those and document my process here.
