Samurai/Second Digital Painting

Huzzah, it's finished (for now)--my second digital painting! This time I took an iconic photo from my trip to Japan back in 2008. It's a photo of a statue taken outside of the Tokyo Imperial Place. The statue is of Kusunoki Masashige,  a famous Samurai who was the symbol of samurai honor and loyalty. You can read all about him here in this wiki-entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusunoki_Masashige

This photo never seems to escape me; it's one of the photos I picture first every time I imagine my trip to Japan.

Final Painting

(Very) Rough Sketch

There's something I've noticed every time I try to paint with only focus on the values/forms of a subject--my images almost always seem to grow wider/stretch. In this case, I tried doing a quick sketch before working on my piece, but in the end I made some adjustments anyway. For instance, in the photo, there's a tangent between the samurai's rope and his arm; I lowered to the rope in order to make the rope easier to read. I also brightened the samurai's face in order make it stand out. Lastly, I just let some things go dark, as supposed to drawing in every single detail.

If anything, I wish I had taken a better photo in order to create a more exciting composition. But hey, when I was younger, I thought this was a cool composition. Haha, ah well...

Until next time.