Finn Week 1: Kings

For our first week we decided to tackle the Kings in the story. There are two kings in the story, one at the beginning and one closer to the end of the story. I was to do the first and Karol was to do the second.

 I started off with some silhouettes  trying to find some interesting shapes that I liked. I enjoy this method as it allows me to imagine what would be inside that shape. It also allows me to think of the outermost shape and not have to worry building from the inside out. It frees your mind to make the outer shape interesting and unique.

After this I started sketching. Karol and I both wanted to go back to trying some traditional methods for parts of this project as it's what got us into art in the first place and we spend a lot of time using digital methods. I began with some head studies, looking at head pieces the King might wear. These were great as I could come up with lots of elaborate, random shapes and sizes. I didn't have to worry to much about proportions for now.

I then began sketching some more full bodied kings, the whole time thinking of some of my prefered head studies. What appealed to me the most of my sketches were the one's where the King looked a bit mad.

I imagined that after years of living surrounded by the forest that the king would slowly have started to lose his mind. He lives in constant paranoia that the forest surrounding his castle will swallow him and his people up next as it did his huntsmen. After my explorations I thought it would be cool to have the king dressed in pieces of the forest, trying to show that he controls nature when in fact it's always the other way around. His crown is now full of feathers, twigs and plants, and he wears the skins of the animals his huntsmen have brought back from the forest to try and convince himself the he rules over the forest. I wanted to try and make him look more imposing than he actually is. Maybe he wears bigger cloths and sits in a massive throne made of sharp and twisted wood from the forest to give this impression?