Art: Pencil & Charcoal Monk

Gettin' over the sick, so hey, time to post something. Oh yeah, and happy Thanksgiving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M260wOm_csM&feature=player_embedded
Music unrelated - I'm not a big Tori Amos fan by any means, but I enjoy this song at least.

So, what do I have? Well, art I guess!

Normally I would just leave these to be tweeted instead since they started as just a practice piece and doesn't actually have any direction. However, since these can almost be relevant to The Monk playbook for Avatar World, they're worthy of being posted here.

So, here's the pencil piece!

Click for Full Size.
I have another variation on this guy, perhaps showing off the exact contrast of the white/grey/black better. Plus I think it looks cool.

So it's done with entirely with a mechanical pencil on a regular sheet of printer paper. It was my doodle in a particularly boring Bio lecture. I'm not so proud of the hands, but I really like the robes, and the expression on the face was pretty good for me.
I did it at all as an attempt to learn some of the ways the saffron robes of Tibetan monks flow. Here's the reference picture I used.

 

 Scrounged off Google images. If you can't tell, this is the third guy, with modification - just the robes were modeled off him.

I said charcoal too, right? This was done later, since I simply can't bring my charcoal places - it makes a huge mess.

Just thought someone might be interested in seeing my charcoal itself. That's what I use, and the dust, and the smudging, gets everywhere on my hands, even with the stick wrapped.

 Please ignore the amazingly disturbing face. That charcoal doesn't have the precision I need for small faces - keep in mind that this is about three inches tall, no larger. I'd like to TRY larger next though, I bet I could get more out of my charcoal that way. Anyway, aside from the face, I think this does some really great stuff with the robes, makes them appear very fluid and less, well, "line-y" than the pencil sketch. I think an ideal image, at this size, is a combination of the pencil for the fine details and initial shaping, with the charcoal producing the rich blacks and the smooth, smudged shading.

Likely neither of these will ACTUALLY be the art for The Monk in Avatar World, but they're definitely steps in the direction.

So there, have a post. Have a happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers!

End Recording,

Ego.