The Offering

Hey look! I finished it. Yaay. *waggles arms Muppet style*

When I originally started designing this I was thinking of a demon/vampire like monster. But when looking for ideas for the background I ran across a public domain photograph of a stone Bull's head/man beast, and I started liking the idea of tying this in with Greek Mythology. Vampires have gotten pretty lame lately anyway. So maybe she's a relation of the Minotaur. Or offering an unknown...something to him. Leaving the sacrifice unknown seemed like a good idea, and the pose and circle design is reminicent of a religious icon on purpose.

I've never taken a piece to a finish that involved blood before and getting it to look right took some time. I wanted it to have a streaky, streaming drippy-ness look and still have the gloppy viscous nature of blood, but I wanted to just leave it as a graphic element, like her dress, letting the outline do the work. Pretty happy with it now, but I was under the impression for awhile that I'd never be able to get it right...like when drawing horses. Blasted horses.

If anyone's interested in this as a print let me know, thinking of selling prints on Etsy again.

Previews

Figured I'd post preview images of what I'm current working on, since I haven't finished anything in a bit.

 I'm really hoping the one I knock out of the park and submit it to some contests. It's not the kinda work that I usually take to a finished portfolio piece level, and I'm pretty psyched for it. The next elemental is taking awhile too because I got too excited over getting it into Illustrator before I had really fleshed out the background. Sigh. Backgrounds.

Besides the two vectors here I've also been sketching out a children's book-type-cover deal, and a Vampirella pinup (wait wat, yes...Weird right?). Oh, and the Sabriel piece. Haven't forgotten about that. When I get burned out on vectoring I start sketching and that leads to more ideas which is great but also bad, because it distracts from me actually finishing the vector I was working on.

I may start trying to sell prints again. I believe my work has improved overall since that last time I attempted it, so here's hoping. Also Barry and I have a super awesome printer now, so I won't have to spend a half hour angering an Office Max or Staples employee when complaining about how bad their printers are and 'Dude, omg it's scratched the paper, I can't sell this, can you try another printer and could you lighten the file up more?' etc etc...I'm pretty sure I'm the bane of the one Staples print girl's existence.

Next update will probably be about prints, or one of these guys finished. Whooo.