Sustained Investigation #2

With this piece of artwork I was trying to finalize the design for the main character of the comic I'm planning on drawing for my senior project. This character has changed a lot from the very first version I drew of her. In that version she was a very kind, smart, and responsible person that I mainly associated with the color blue as a level headed and calming person that cetereds the people around her. In this newest iteration this character, now named AJ, is brash, headstrong, but tries to be a kind person even if she herself is all over the place and not yet centered. I tried to express these less than perfect personality traits through this piece of art. AJ is obviously committing vandalism in this image but the body language and setting (open daylight) show how she's not concerned about that at all, rather she's thinking about how cool she is being. I was inspired to make a less-than-perfect main character that's still a good person at their core. 

This piece of art was created on the digital program Procreate on an iPad using an apple pencil as a stencil. The canvas size is that of a standard comic book page, the size I plan to use for the comic strip. According to the statistics under the "canvas information" section of the program I spent 7 hours and 38 minutes on the canvas, which tracks because 6-7 hours is always the range my finalized digital art pieces end up falling under. I imported my traditional sketch into the program and used that to make a more finalized sketched out composition, then did lineart, color, background, details. I did this piece digitally because I plan on making the entire comic digitally. 

I tried to convey the characters personality in a few ways artistically. First she has a very confident pose which I found I liked a bit better in the original sketch then the finished piece, movement is something I have to work on. She also has a very sly expression on her face, combined with the pose it almost says "I know what i'm doing is wrong and that's what's fun about it". Through the background and objects in the scene I also tried to do some storytelling. She has multiple bottles of spray paint, she brought a bag, she has tough clothing, the design she chose to spray point was not the simplest. Concussion: she came prepared and does this often, she is a troublemaker. What might challenge this a bit is her pink sweater, still clean unlike the rest of her clothing. The seater itself is pink, a bit softer of a color then you might expect from a main character, especially with one demonstrating a personality like hers. It also complements the background nicely that seems to be abducting her...