2nd sketch idea for the center image.
Just more ideas on the matriarch's headdress and what the guests attire will look like.
First start out with drawing half the design, making sure my lines are fairly clean and easy for me to trace. I keep a bunch of my sketches of ideas and such up next to my board for obvious reasons, this helps me focus on the things I liked from my previous ideas with out having to go search for a sketch when I remember something I liked about it.
I then trace over my drawing onto tracing paper, using something like a layout pencil or something similar that is very dark and rubs off easy onto other surfaces. I then take that tracing, flip it, and match it up end to end with my original drawing and retrace it. This time following the path of my 1st tracing, I make sure that the graphite is actually being pressed and transferred onto the board making a mirror copy of my original drawing. I'm making this sound way more difficult than it is, it's just simply an image flip/transfer.
Here's the initial sketch. I'll have to refine this a lot more, adjusting as I go through the whole process, especially with the characters, most of these are just place holders until I get some reference. I usually do my first drawings and composition with out much reference, just to focus on how I want everything laid out. I'll then go and take pictures of things I'm having trouble with and want a more clear idea of how its set up and go from there. A lot of this is making the decision to leave somethings in favor of realism over fantasy and vice versa.
Very basic sketch not much detail and still needs to be refined, but a lot of that is going to be done with the paint as the drawing I'm using just for the shapes and composition.
