I didn’t plan on getting into detail about the next step in my Ent Art, but I’ve received some encouraging feedback from a few people, so I figure more than one person besides me might find some value in this. This is a sequel to my original post about how I figured out how I wanted to interpret Tolkien's description of Treebeard. This is a post about designing the way the ent and hobbits and text fit into the overall image. I intend to make this look like an illuminated manuscript.
First off: Research
I googled “Illuminated Manuscript” and got some ideas. The results are beautiful. You see a gallery of medieval pages out of medieval books, all hand lettered and bedazzled with patterns and illustrations surrounding and uplifting the text so that each page is a work of art. The trick here is for me to mimic the look of these texts and keep detail and a realism in the illustration of the ent and the hobbits.
Basic design
So I design a boarder. I want to make the Ent, Treebeard, the main focus of the drawing, so I made a circle around his torso and Drew a few pale blocks on the left side and bottom of the page. We’ll pretend this page is on the left side of a large tome of pages, and it’s attached to the book’s spine on the right side. I draw patterns of roots, trees, and clouds over the page and have their edges correspond to edges of the circle and blocks.
Refinement
I take away the blocks, extend the edges of the canvas, and finish off the whole boarder of the sketch. Now it’s looking pretty pretty alright.
The text is red within the perimeter that was the circle to retain the circle’s path visually.
Color Areas
In the final piece, these areas of color should still generally retain that. I mean, no matter the other colors I add to each region, the overall tint of that region will be a pale yellow, a light camouflage green, brownish purple, or black.
Watercolor Test and Cartoon
This is a quick miniature test to see if my digital drawing will look good in the real world. Consider this a dress rehearsal. Once I can see that it’s designed enough, and the colors well balanced in the old old old old-time’ style, then I’ll be ready to do the final water color it becomes a rehearsal dress rehearsal. The Cartoon is there to define out all of the lines that will be in the final. I'll project the image of the Cartoon onto my final paper. Black and white high contrast lines are easiest to use when tracing from a projector.
I'll post the final image when it's done. Stay tuned!