Yet another piece relating to The Alchemist! I think, revisions aside, there’s only one more to do after this. This is yet another piece influenced by N. C. Wyeth and Aztec art.
This time I picked a scene at the Oasis where they are talking about the journey ahead — Santiago has just recently decided that yes, he will continue with the Alchemist to Egypt in search of his Personal Legend.
This piece — up through the color thumbnail stage — was done about three times. The first time was just straight up like the initial Crystal Merchant line art. It was pretty boring. The next was slightly stylized, however it left a lot to be desired still. After that we once again went and messed around the styling again, trying to improved it. This is how the rough tonal for that looked.
The one part of it everyone liked was the color. In fact, that’s probably the one part of it I did do right — one part that I definitely decided to keep all the way through. The center or rightmost ones were the likely candidates. I picked the rightmost one.
So, we were told to revisit the layout yet again and make some more changes based on critiques from class. I finally had enough with the lame layout I had and redid the whole bloody thing.
Once again, to tonal. It took two passes to get a foundation I liked, but I went with this one. From there, I applied the colors from the earlier color thumbs, tweaking them to fit the new composition.
