I used Character Artist for class.
CharlesWayneRobinson
Traveler
In my Foundations A course, we needed to produce a picture for one of our art projects. We had to use the picture as a bases for a sketch that also used aspects of hatching, cross-hatching, and stippling. I used Character Artist to design my main character, the Greek God Poseidon. I then sketched a picture of Poseidon using the picture as the basis of the sketch. It was the focal point, but was part of a larger story. The sketch represents the story were Poseidon sends the sea monster, Ketos, to Aithiopia to consume Andromeda. She is of course rescued in the story by Perseus wielding the severed head of Medusa. The sketch shows the city in the distance and has Poseidon and Ketos as the main focus of the piece. It has dark hard lines because the next part is to transfer the sketch onto a piece of material where we will carve out the negative spaces so that we can use it to create an ink plate for making a pressed-ink version of the sketch.
Here is the original Character Artist design.
Here is the original Character Artist design.
Comments
Remember, it has dark hard lines because the next part is to transfer the sketch onto a piece of material where we will carve out the negative spaces so that we can use it to create an ink plate for making a pressed-ink version of the sketch.
In addition, the Character Artist version was made to use as an inspiration / model; so the sketch is not an exact copy of the Character Artist version.
I will post my attempt at press-inking for everyone to laugh at - Lol!
Just another way to show how great ProFantasy's product is! :-)
The first thing that you will notice is that the image is reversed. This happens because we trace the original drawing onto a thin sheet that we then press onto the flat surface that we are going to carve on. This creates a mirror image effect.
We have to carve the negative image to make the ink print pad. As such, the black parts are what is left when we have carved out everything else and are the highest points on the carving. Everything that is tannish is what was carved out of the image, the negative space.
If it is done right, we can place ink on the carved ink pad and then lay paper on it. Use a press and then get a good ink picture on the paper. We will see how that comes out later this week.
The carving was more difficult than I thought it would be and I could not put a lot of the detail into it that I wanted. In addition, there are a couple of times that my knife skidded and took some detail off as well. Finally, the fine hatching, cross-hatching, and stippling was too small to carve and we have to have them on the project. As such, I had to change some things around to do some larger examples to meet the requirements for the grade.
This took 17hrs of work to do. Still, I think that it came out pretty decent for my first try at this sort of thing and it shows how ProFantasy Software can be used in so many ways.
Out of curiosity, what is the ink pad made out of (wood, cork, ...?) and what tools did you use to carve it?