Scorpio - Sketch Phase (Patreon)

Starting on each new piece, I have a collection of ideas I want to include. Some of them appeared in earlier, exploratory work and some of them appeared first in the sketch I ultimately choose to work from.

In this sketch, I was playing around with a solution that gave Barbiel a sword. Earlier versions had loose attempts to include a weapon, but all felt too much like a fantasy warrior and not angelic enough. The problem centered around the character looking too aggressive. Re-framing the relationship with the sword, from an aggressive stand, to a protective one fixed that issue and brought me to this point.

There were some consistent elements from earlier sketches, like the inclusion of a more chitinous material around the shoulders might see integration back into this design as I move forwards into the Value Phase. That's the last point where I like to make changes like that, because the longer a piece goes on, the less I like to fiddle with it.

More soon.

-Pete