Arsenic Lullaby - Krampus illustration progress

In past years I held an Arsenic Lullaby X-mas coloring contest, where you could print out an A.L. Xmas illustration and coloring it by any means of skill level you see fit and win stuff.

http://www.arseniclullabies.com/XMAScards16.html

Last year I kinda slacked off on it. Getting people interested in illustration type contests is a bit more work than just getting them interested in seeing your work. The inking contest I held in October for example,

https://steemit.com/art/@arseniclullaby/arsenic-lullaby-inking-contest

guess how many entries I got...zero. That means if just one single person out of the thousands who knew about it via steemit, FB and my mass email list, had sent something in...that person would have won. Granted I didn't really plug the hell out of it, but I mentioned it. People seem to have lost the taste for the thrill of competition.

I'm still mulling over doing the X-mas coloring contest, depends on if I have something new to color.

...if this actually turns out, I'll have the coloring contest again.

This is a rare instance for me, where it is going to be more fun to ink than to pencil. There's a lot going on here that needs tight pencils to keep it from being a mess, but if done right, the inking will actually be fun.

stage two, refined thumbnail.

I pulled back so you can see little marks/dashes on the side that people ask about when they get original artwork from me. Those are to line up where the vanishing point is when I blow it up. Normally there's just two sets ( left side and right side), this one has three, since the camera is looking up I have a vanishing point above. A bit overkill maybe for something like this...but to be fair, it's not that uncommon for me to have four or five set of vanishing points for the sake of effect/eye movement.

Finished pencils,

have a couple decisions to make on the background, like if the poles on the top should also be candy canes w/hooks or just straight...I'll determine the way to go on those when I'm inking. How convoluted is starts to look will be the deciding factor and if it's harming the composition overall.

Initial inking

When I'm inking the straight lines with a brush ( which I really don't recommend) I'll start with the shorter ones and work my way up to that longer ones, like the candy can on the far left side. The "how to" aspects of that will be to attempt it in one long straight pull but aim at stopping by one of the swirls if I get shaky...visually the eye won't notice a flaw in the line as much if it's right next to other details as it would if it was alone out in the open.

Here's what I mean by picking your spot of where to stop the line

That's about 5-6cm before I could tell I was losing the trail so I stopped it by the swirl. I'll pick the line back up there , try to sculpt it s best I can and once the swirl is there it won't be that noticeable that it wasn't a continuous line

That turned out better than I thought, so it's not a great example of what I mean, but you get the idea.

Big chaotic scenes like this give you a lot of places and ways to hide. Wally Wood is a famous illustrator from the golden age of comics. He did work on "Weird Science" "Tales from the Crypt (I think)" eventually "Mad Magazine" and early issues of Daredevil

He had a saying "when in doubt, black it out". I don't use heavy shadows ever so my saying is " when in doubt, surround it by so many details the eye won't notice"...okay, it doesn't rhyme, I'm not Wally Wood.

I'm hoping to have this finished to show you tomorrow!

The Arsenic Lullaby Online store has Krampus prints, original artwork and the usual Arsenic Lullaby treasures! Coupon code _humbug- good for 25% off entire order! (if you wanna use steem just lemme know - on discord as - ArsenicLullaby#2207 or email douglaspasz-at--arseniclullabies.com )

https://www.arseniclullabies.com/store/index.php?id_category=17&controller=category&id_lang=1

https://www.arseniclullabies.com/store/index.php?id_category=17&controller=category&id_lang=1