Day two. I decided to continue work on the picture, partly because of this blog! Last night I photographed the model with perspective and lighting that would fit into the virtual scene. I located a male figure photo to use as a reference and included it in the sky. The mock-up at this stage was as shown below.
Then I prepared a piece of paper, 88x56cm for the final drawing. To accurately place the objects I use a simple crosshair, a circle with cross, which is easy to draw. I don't like gridding. I find I'm distracted by the grid lines and the resulting drawing is less accurate than a freehand drawing. The primary purpose of the crosshair is to place and size the object. The monolith with crosshair is shown below.
Then I drew the mountain background, and then the monolith.
After that I did the same for the face. The face photo is poor, the actual size is shown below. The photo was about 20mm, about ten times smaller than the painting!
Drawing from blurred photographs is very difficult, but it is good training and here an exact copy was not necessary or desirable. I drew the outline and used basic knowledge of what faces look like to fill in some of the lines that are just not there, like the details around the eyes. I'll invent some flowing hair for the back of the head. I roughly marked it out for later.
The sketch so far is show below. It's a poor photograph but the main objects can be made out. The gridded floor on the left looks rather strange and might be removed. Certainly not all of those guide lines are part of the finished picture, mere geometrical guides based on a pentacle.
