Crissy Crossbones & Knocktoberfest

Whhhat?  Another new post already?  Why yes.  Yes there is.

I'm itching to get this art blog up to date with this season's artwork, but I don't want to skip over any of the drawings I've done in order to do so.  So, I'll be plowing through the last few from last season within the next couple of days.  It's not exactly a consistent posting schedule but...eh, whatever.

Anyway, our bout committee decided on "Knocktoberfest" as the theme for our September 2012 home bout (contrary to the cognate, Oktoberfest actually takes place in September).  Besides the fact that the timing was right, this bout also happened to kick off the beginning of beer sales.  That's right, we serve beer at our bouts!

Selected to be our poster girl this time around was Crissy Crossbones.  While most of the other skater drawings I had done consisted of more dynamic "action" poses, I decided that I wanted to take a different approach with Bones.  The plan was to draw her reclining back in a giant beer stein :P

 
As you can see here, I drew the original sketch in a humble notebook. Haha.  For whatever reason I'm almost disappointed that the notebook lines didn't really show up in this scan though.  I have no idea why.

Bones' drawing was actually the first time I had to incorporate a tattoo (butterflies on her right shoulder).  Well, I didn't have to.  But if I was going to put as much effort into these drawings as I had been, it seemed wrong to leave out something that was permanently inked onto her skin.  But I digress...

Anyway, because I try to create a believable likeness in these drawings, a bit of a predicament arises whenever the poster girl has a tattoo or some other distinguishing physical trait.  That is, I have to scour their photos in the hopes that I can find some where it is prominently featured.

Of course the easier option would be for me to just take a photo if them myself, only it takes away some of the mystery and surprise of the poster girl's identity.  It's supposed to be a secret until the poster is revealed, so going around snapping photos of someone's body parts seems a bit telling...

I run into the same problem time after time with eye color as well.  As much as I love my teammates, I don't stare into each and every one of their eyes meaningfully enough to memorize what color they all are.  So sorry, Ladies, if I've ever used the incorrect eye color for your drawings.  But at least now you know why.  

Time was (as it always does) working against me, and I had to leave Bones at flat colors in order to meet the deadline.  But like I did with Speeds Kate's drawing, I plan on going back in at some point to give her a full-shading treatment.  I just hope it doesn't take me 6 months to do it...

Bones "modeling" our new jersey style

Even though I did save a bit of time by leaving the drawing in flat colors, that time was probably eaten up again by some of the detail work.  Besides custom-made leg-warmers with her skater name and number, she also had these decals on her helmet that spelled out her name in some sort of skeleton/bone font.  I still don't actually know that I found the correct one, but if anything it's awfully close.  The number on her helmet was doodled in, however, because the font's numbers looked a little too different.   At least, I think that's why.  Maybe the font didn't even include the numbers?  It was so long ago by now I really can't remember.

Here's a close-up detail of the helmet decal.
Huh, never noticed until now that I had it running into
the holes in her helmet... -_-*

Now, aside from drawing a giant beer stein, I really wasn't too sure of how to incorporate Oktoberfest into the design.  My knowledge base of Oktoberfest in general was (and still is) pretty limited.  So I took to the internet and consulted my good friend, Google Image Search.

What I kept seeing over and over again were patterns made of white and light blue diamonds, orange flags and busty lederhosen-clad fraulein.  Yeah, was not going to incorporate that last one...  But the diamonds and orange flags--no problem!

There was an attempt to incorporate German architectural elements into the design as well, but unfortunately most of that was blocked by the orange banners.  Still, you can see bits and pieces of it at the very top and bottom of the poster design.

The final bout poster for "Knocktoberfest"

Looking at the poster, I should have drawn Bones and the beer stein at the same time.  I purposely drew them separately to allow for compositional flexibility, but as a result I feel like her seated position isn't convincing.  Not in this particular stein anyway.  Eh well.  Lesson learned.

Fonts Used: Germanica, Market Deco