Hello Everyone!
Today I want to talk with you about the thought process behind this piece. Usually I don't get much chance to talk about the thoughts and worries behind the drawing. That's why this skill of mine is underdeveloped. I would like to share some of it with you, and if in case you are not interested in my blabber just enjoy the drawing :)
This piece started as a painting practice, I was struggling with it at that time. So, in order to fix the situation I did some black and white studies, and decided to finally challenge myself with a design of my own. I decided to start with a something familiar and fairly easy. Centaur is recognisable almost by everyone, but how can I make the design more exiting. With certain ideas comes certain restriction.
What if Centaurs would exist in other places too like Africa for example? This little geographical twist was exactly what I needed, and so my research for the piece started.
First, I needed to switch the horse part to a local four-legged animal. Antelope was my choice. I didn't take gnu, but a smaller antelope nyala with a nice pattern. To unify both parts better, human and antelope, I borrowed features from nyala and added to human part. That's how he got his ears, horns and white patterns on his face.
The next step was to decide how much culture I want to show. In general centaurs are portrait in mythological or fantasy setting. That means that the technology is not too advanced. For the inspiration and references I used different African tribe jewellery designs. I decided not to use traditional spear but to create something of my own. The purpose was to bring viewers glance back with the hook at the end.
Overall I'm quite happy with the result. I'm not sure if I would use that picture in a year in my portfolio, but it served well with the purpose it was created for in the first place.
See you in the next post,
Cheers!
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