This is an old painting I did in 01 - pencil and oil on watercolor paper. Below is the original scan, and above what I've been doing to it in photoshop, starting with a sepia photo filter to neutralize the harsh cartoon-colored background, and punching up contrast. I've also been adding complementaries to neutralize and grey down some of the colors on the figure where it's needed. I just spent 2 days digging out a crapload of old drawings and scanning them (coming soon) and I got disgusted with the cartooniness of my lines, shapes and colors. I used to really go all loose and sloppy and rough, and distort way too much. I looked through Amalgam and surprisingly, Williams doesn't really distort nearly as much as it seems like - it's very controlled when he does. And his colors are pretty realistic and toned down, except in some of his graphic novel stuff that's intended to look a bit comic bookish. Plus I'm taking to heart what he said about no trying to artificially develop your own style, just do the best most honest work you can and your real voice will come through. I love the way this is starting to look! My new bywords are Careful and Controlled. And I quit trying to become Kent Williams jr - he has his way of working that's natural to him, and I have mine.
** Edit:
I was just looking at some Kent Williams (found a big folio-sized book containing a few of his paintings and drawings while I was digging out my old stuff) and got disgusted with the meticulousness and precision of what I'm doing - but then I started to remember what it was like when I first learned to draw really well - it takes a long time and I had to go through a meticulous phase to get there. So I figure it must be the same when you're learning to work in full color - you have to become methodical and meticulous for a while in order to learn the principles and fully absorb them, and then once you've done that you can start to get faster.
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