Before I drew this I did my usual scan of pinterest for reference images to work from (stuff like goat horns, faun, satyre etc…) and I then did a few sketches of what I thought the character might look like and how it might pose, but nothing seemed to work. This occasionally happens and I suppose it’s a bit like writers block, except, well, for art. What I’ve found, through much trial and error, is that if you continue focus on what you can’t do then you’ll never get anything done (or worse, you’ll hate what you produce). Instead work around the problem and the answer will appear in a more organic manner. In this case, as I’ve mentioned, the character was the problem. My issue was trying to make the character pose in a certain way and I was drawing blanks (pun intended, thank you). So instead of focusing on this I decided to start drawing a background in which the character would exist. I must have spent no less than a minute sketching a very rough tree before the answer came to me and the rest of the illustration grew from there. It seems obvious, but the best characters come to life when they are put in imaginary situations or are reacting to the world they live in in some way. That has been, in my opinion, why some of the most interesting characters I’ve drawn recently appear to be reacting to something. To hammer this point home to myself there is now a note pinned to my board that reads “With characters think about; the world, interaction, reaction”. I think this fairly sums up in a succinct manner a great many aspects of character design without getting too specific, which is a good thing because you can’t see the woods for the trees sometimes.
Anyway, I’m tired now and I’m going to bed.
Cheers
Matt
mattwalkerart.com 