Introduction to Recca's Champions

Recca’s Champions is a graphic novel project of mine that I’ve been working on for over a year now. The story is set as a prelude to another story I was writing during my high school years over seven years ago. The storyline has changed rather drastically since then, but I cannot deny it’s roots. Especially since keeping those roots around will one day open up an avenue to an entirely new adventure that will be more closely based on the original storyline.

What is it about?

Recca was once a prosperous place full of magic and wonder that was nurtured and maintained by the Six Founding Gods. One day, over a hundred years ago, the God of Darkness and Chaos became selfish and tried to usurp the other Gods so he could be the sole ruler of Recca. This was the start of the Great War. The Great War ended some time later with bloodshed and devastation on both sides. The Founding Gods had all been sealed away or weakened to the point of eternal slumber. The mortals of Recca were alone and suffered greatly from the imbalance of the world.

The story begins over a hundred years after the Great War when a gryphon seer finds the Dark God’s sealed soul and awakens him. The Great War is about to start again, but this time around there are no other gods to oppose the Dark God. In the face of destruction, the mortals of Recca must take a stand. The future speaks of the rise of Recca’s Champions and Recca’s Fiends, mortals given the powers of the Gods, to fight for the world or fight for its destruction.

Who will triumph over the other has yet to be seen…

The Gods

There are six Founding Gods of Recca that each control an element as follows:

Holy, Goddess of Light and Serenity

Latz, God of Darkness and Chaos

Xaphain, God of Fire, Death and Rebirth

Rae’Kia Goddess of Water and Life

Kizaar, God of Earth and Valor

Isaria, Goddess of Wind and Spirit

During the Great War all six of the Founding Gods were sealed away, disrupting the balance that they together created.

The Heaven Realm is also home to a large society of lesser gods, though they were pretty much wiped out during the Great War. Those who survived were banished to the Earth Realm.

Champions

One of the definitions of ‘Champion’ is:

Hero or warrior

A hero or warrior, especially a knight who fought in behalf of a monarch in former times

It is not immediately the definition one thinks of when thinking of the word ‘Champion’, but I found that it fits in pretty well with what this story and the title of the story represents.

The Champions of the story are characters who are given powers by either a god or goddess of Recca to restore the world’s balance. Sheena for instance will become Holy’s Champion, with the ability to manipulate the light element.

Fiends

Fiends are the same as the Champions with a different set of goals in mind. They are characters who are given powers of the gods in order to further disrupt the balance, destroy the world and help created it anew under Latz’ rule. King Bloodfang in the prologue is given some of Latz’ powers and becomes his Fiend of Darkness.

How exactly these powers come into play will be determined as the story progresses.

Blue and Gold Macaw Pair WIP

Start of an Experiment

This project was a bit of an experiment for me. Normally I use Bristol board paper for the majority of my works, but I saw on WetCanvas! that colored pencil artists have been using Ampersand Pastel Board for their works which turn out some fantastic results. I did not have a pastel board in my inventory, but I did have a 5x7 Ampersand Gesso Board, so I tried that.

This piece is also the first in a while that I have done without the additional use of pastels, markers or pen…yep...strictly Prismacolor Pencil all the way through.

I started first with making a sketch off of my reference photo on a separate piece of paper and then tracing it over to the board with tracing paper. As you can see in the picture, I smudged some of the graphite while trying to clean up the lines. Trying to erase it made it worse so I decided not to try that again. Luckily I was pretty certain at the time that I wasn’t going to leave the background white so I could cover it with color in later steps.

Layers

The gesso board has a bit of a texture to it (probably more toothy than the pastel board would have been if I had one) so I had to build up more layers of colored pencil than I normally would. I started first by lightly blocking in all of the colors just to get a feel for the texture. Afterwards I was fighting the urge to outline the macaws and the branch with pen since the initial layer of colors started hiding the pencil outlines. I resisted though.

I built up more layers of color on the birds on the progress shot below. During this stage some of the layers were getting thicker and I noticed that sometimes the act of trying to go over the layer again started pushing aside previous layers. This worked well for adding in highlights, but was a bit of an annoyance when a lightening effect wasn’t my goal. More layering helped combat this issue.

  

I blocked in the remaining sections of blue on the two macaws with true blue and went over it again with a heavier layer of powder blue to give me an undercoat of color to work with. The roughness of the board forced me to press down pretty hard on the powder blue layer to cover the majority of the white spots so the waxy results of too much prismacolor pencil in one spot was already starting to show, but there was still enough tooth left for adding in feather detail.

Next I added in a layer of electric blue over the powder blue to darken it up a bit and used the other blues from my previous list to start adding in the feather details. The primary feathers and some of the shadows have some violet blue added in as well.

  

I finished adding the details to the birds and branch before adding several layers of greens down for the background. Here is the final shot.

List of Colors

Here is a full list of colors that were used in this piece. All of the colored pencils I am using are prismacolor pencils. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a method to my madness so I couldn’t really say how I color. One of my goals for recording my art during the WIP stages is so that I can start to nail down some of my methods.

Background is a light layer of aquamarine with some spots of muted turquoise. It was then layered with dark green, peacock green, grass green, true green, indigo blue, and blended with a brush.

Yellow parts are a canary yellow with goldenrod and yellow ochre shadows and cream highlights. I believe there are some areas of spanish orange too.

The macaws’ beaks are muted turquoise and cool gray 90%.

The black feathers under their chins are indigo blue, dark green, and some cool gray 90%

Their faces are cool gray 90% and the white part is the exposed board.

The green parts of their heads are a mix of spring green, true green, dark green and olive green. (Possibly with some hint of a blue color too, I cannot remember.)

The blues of the macaws are done with a mix of true blue, powder blue, electric blue, cerulean blue, an unmarked blue that looks like a lighter version of true blue (303 is the number, but the name isn’t showing), an unmarked blue that is slightly lighter than indigo blue (306), and indigo blue.

The branch was done with putty beige, sienna brown, sienna beige, colorless blender.

Weekly Preview: 11/14/2011 to 11/20/2011

Every site I’ve looked at for tips on blogging said that consistent and knowledgeable posts is one of the biggest keys to blogging success. Honestly, I’m very new to blogging and to consistency, but I’m going to give it a try with hopes that this blog will blossom into something my readers will find interesting and informative.

 

I have put together a very basic schedule that I will edit along the way:

 

Mondays - Weekly Previews

 

Wednesdays - At the drawing board discussions.

 

Fridays - Inside looks at my graphic novel Recca’s Champions

 

And if there are certain topics you would like me to cover then please send an email my way at darkgryphstudios@yahoo.com

 

This Week

 

Wednesday I will go through the steps of progression on a colored pencil drawing of a pair of blue and gold macaws.

 

Friday I will give an introduction of my graphic novel, Recca’s Champions. Get information on my inspiration for the story and the events that lead to the start of the story. I will also write about the meaning of the title’s name.

 

Recca’s Champions will be going through a style change starting on January 15, 2012. I will be using traditional media to color the pages instead of photoshop. Visit Recca’s Champions official homepage regularly for further updates.

Scarlet Tanager Progress Shots

This drawing is part of a personal project of mine to draw several species of birds pulled from a birds of north america book I like to use as a reference. This particular picture is of a Scarlet Tanager.

First I starting with a basic sketch of the bird and the perch he would be sitting on.

I used my camera to photograph the sketch so it didn't turn out quite as well as it would have if I had scanned it. But it's good enough to tell that I mainly sketched the basic outline of the bird with some messy detailing in the wings. I normally go over my lines with a prismacolor micron pen and it is this step where I clean up my line art and finish prepping for the coloring steps.

I've been practicing on rendering details through my markers and colored pencils instead of using the line art, this way the line are is just a basic outline. Now the drawing is ready for color. I start off by coloring in the background with pastels to keep it soft and lacking in great detail to keep the focus on the scarlet tanager. Once the pastels are laid down I started putting down the base colors of the bird, the branch he is sitting on, and a few more branches with leaves.

I noticed immediately after scanning that his head was pretty harsh on the eyes. The yellow, mixed with the orange was way too bright that not even messing with the levels in photoshop fixed it. I didn't want to put another layer of marker color over it, so I saved that troublesome spot for the colored pencils to fix.

After the marker was done, I ended up letting the drawing sit for a bit as I worked on other projects. Last night I finally came back to it and used my prismacolor pencils to render the details and add in darker shadows and brighter highlights. I even managed to darken up his head so that bright yellow wasn't so horrible anymore. I completed the picture by adding in some white ink into the feathers and branches.

I'm very proud of this piece, I think it's one of my best realistic type of pictures so far and I reasserted the fact that I really enjoy drawing birds.

ACEO Excercise Results

In my previous post, I gave myself a self imposed assignment to draw for at least twenty minutes a day for the next two weeks using ACEOs of my comic’s characters as the theme. Here are the results.

 

 

 

Here are the names of the characters from left to right, starting at the top left hand corner. (This is also the order I drew them all in))

 

Holy, Latz, Kizaar, Isaria

Xaphain, Rae’Kia, Sheena, Shynta

Kaiten, Azahri, Sirius, Alloy

Archion, Brayan, Recca

 

A good majority of these characters do not have completed designs so the colors may be a bit off when they start making their appearances in my comic, Recca’s Champions. And some of them I tried to use a brown color pallet to give them a sepia-like tone, but I didn’t like it so I switched back to full color.

 

All in all these were pretty simple to draw and I had a lot of fun with them, though I wasn’t able to draw one a day for twenty minutes like I had originally planned. I hit a snag that caused me to miss a couple of days. Luckily they were easy to make up and I even made an extra one.

 

My next goal regarding ACEOs is to make 100 of them by January 15, 2012 so I can start the first step towards opening an online store and selling my artwork. I’ll post updates on my progress as I go.

Disconnecting to Reconnect

I’ve been reading a blog by Dan Goodwin called ‘A Big Creative Yes to the creativity within’ which gives advice, motivation, inspiration and all that good stuff on sparking one’s creativity. It’s been a very insightful blog to read since many of the topics I find pertains to me (and I’m sure thousands of others) His words have caused me to reflect on where I stand now on my ever extending path of creativity and let out a bemoaning sigh as I realize that it’s being choked off by all of the different projects and responsibilities I’ve been accumulating over the years. I think if I have any hope of rebuilding my creative spark so it’ll burn brighter than ever, I need to fully recognize what projects I’m trying to do right now so I can start reducing my list to something much more manageable.

Step One - Creating a List

The mind is a wondrous thing, I’ve found myself surprised on numerous occasions by how much information it can gather. And how well it’s stored all of the different projects I’ve been working on over the past several years, many of which I can still claim as a WIP that hasn’t made much progress. Please bear with me as I list out these projects as they come to mind. For the sake of privacy, sanity and whatnot, I’m just going to publish the list of things that pertain specifically to my artistic endeavors and not my own personal obligations.

Recca’s Champions

Musings

Aerie

Digmon - Nexus - Rising Dusk

Muse’s Ramblings

Art Study List

Bird List

Gryphon List

Colored Serpents

Countless individual picture ideas

Opening up an Ebay/Etsy Store

Opening up Commissions

Managing DG Studios Fan Page on Face Book

Managing relations on Face Book/Deviant Art

Revamping my website

MusingsAerie Blog

- etc.

I suppose with it being all listed out it doesn't really look too terrible, but the magnitude of everything needed to complete these projects makes the list endless. Recca’s Champions, Musings and Aerie for example are all ideas for graphic novels, all of which are planned out to be several chapters long and with a decent sized cast of characters. The Art Study List, Bird List and Gryphon List combined make up 200+ potential drawings.

Step Two - Reducing the List

Reducing this condensed (Yet infinitely long) list will give me some goals to strive for that will be much easier to manage. I don’t want to completely forget any of this though so I’ll store all of these into an ideas notebook that I can look at every so often to keep my motivation fresh. Though with as big as this content is I’m thinking that a few computer folders might be an easier way to record everything rather than a physical notebook.

- Recca’s Champions

- Countless individual picture ideas

- Revamping my website

- MusingsAerie Blog

- Musings

- Aerie

- Digmon - Nexus - Rising Dusk

- Muse’s Ramblings

- Art Study List

- Bird List

- Gryphon List

- Colored Serpents

- Opening up an Ebay/Etsy Store

- Opening up Commissions

- Managing DG Studios Fan Page on Face Book

- Managing relations on Face Book/Deviant Art

I’ve crossed out twelve of the sixteen categories on my list, leaving me with four things left. If I focus my attention on these four things instead of all sixteen then I can gradually get to a point where I can choose another four and keep going. I think the biggest challenge is making sure that I stick to it instead of going back to juggling everything again.

Step Three - Set up a Daily Routine

Ok, so now my list is looking much smaller and more manageable. My next step now is to get to working on these four projects. I’ve seen on two different blogs now that working at something a little at a time all the time is more effective than working in huge chunks of time less often. This is something I know I’m bad at. I generally like to wait for the weekend to draw, but then the weekend always seems too busy so I put it off…it’s a vicious cycle. I’m going to need to start some experiments to see when is the best time for me to fit in those small sessions of time where drawing is all I do every day. Then I can concentrate on the bigger blocks of time available.

This leads me to my first self imposed assignment:

- I will draw 20 minutes a day for the next consecutive 14 days starting now.

- My subject matters will be ACEO’s of the characters from Recca’s Champions

- It is my goal to finish each ACEO within that 20 minute time span. Meaning I should have 14 ACEO’s by the end of this assignment that I will share on my next blog entry.

Wish me luck,

~Amy

Yin and Yang Process

Several months ago (all the way back in January it seems) I sketched out the above image during one of my lunch breaks at work. This sketch is just on a piece of copy paper so I knew if I wanted to complete it that I would have to redraw it on a better medium. For the longest time afterwards I had been debating on whether to make a clayboard of it, make a large painting of it or a pencil/marker drawing of it.

In the end I settled on using to image to practice my watercolor skills. I redrew the image on a larger piece of bristol board paper and used pen and ink to go over the pencil lines. After that was good and dry, I applied some frisket spots to the background so that the spots would remain white throughout the painting process.

I then started adding in the base colors with light washes of blue for the background and purple for the bottom dragon as seen in the following pictures.

I then let the painting sit for several months as I moved between other projects so when I came back around to finishing it, I forgot to keep up with taking progress shot photos.

I added a few more layers of watercolor to build some texture, using greens and blues on the top dragon and darker shades of purple on the bottom dragon. Watercolor is still a relatively untested media for me so I turned to markers and some colored pencil to further define the details of the two dragons and continued building upon the layers until I was satisfied with the outcome.

There was one point in time that I had my three year old neice sitting up with me at my art desk and she was playing with my markers on a separate piece of paper. She was being very good about keeping her scribbles to that paper only, but eventually she made a motion for this piece and left a small auqamarine mark next to the top dragon's tail. Luckily for me the tail had not been colored yet so I was able to cover up most of it. Needless to say, I learned my lesson on leaving such things within reach of the little ones.

See a full view of the picture in my portfolio on DarkGryph Studios.

An Introduction to Musings Aerie

Musings Aerie is a blog I've created with the thought of keeping a written journal of sorts of my artwork and its process. I hope that I can learn from the experience and continue to grow as an artist and as a person.

I'll start this journal off with an introduction. My name is Amy Hardin, I'm a resident of Glendale, AZ and have been for the majority of my life. I've been drawing practically since I could hold a pencil and have expanded on my knowledge throughout the years. I'm currently working a full time job as a records specialist in a lawfirm and am not taking college classes of any sort. My styles and techiniques are pretty much self taught, not really having the time or the money to go for an art degree.

I like to draw with traditional media, mostly colored pencils, markers and recently watercolor. My favorite things to draw are fantasy creatures and wildlife with an affinity to drawing gryphons, dragons and birds. My dream is to one day become a freelance illustrator who makes enough money to live off of. I'm not sure if or when such a thing would be possible to achieve, but I'm going to do all I can to enjoy the time it's going to take to get there.

You can also find me at the following links:

DG-Studios on Deviant Art
DarkGryphStudios Fantasy and Wildlife Art of Amy R. Hardin