Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Dangerous Waters



Got a stellar job which gave me the opportunity to draw the Titanic for the young adult novel Dangerous Waters, by Gregory Mone. (This year is the 100th anniversary of the famous disaster). Once again, my MFA seminar on disasters found me another job as I've become the first call for turning epic tragedies into slightly whimsical ruminations.




I sent these two ideas, the first using the classic image of how the Titanic went down, and tried an unusual point of view for B, from above with dramatic forced perspective.




Going from the rough sketch was going to be tricky without some great reference, so I decided to order a model kit of the Titanic. I put it together with my son on a Saturday. My wife Andrea said "How exactly does this help you make a better drawing?" I was starting to think the same thing while gluing microscopic portholes on this thing. But, handling something in physical space makes it so much easier to construct that object in 2D on paper. Drawing from life cannot be replaced by shoddy pictures from Google. Remember this students! 


...my final sketch with the new reference. 




A few details of the final drawing. 

4 comments:

LandPainter said...

Wow! This turned out fantastic! Great job.

Jori Bolton said...

Wow, that's an amazing piece! That's definitely a cover that would motivate me to pick up the book.

John Hendrix said...

Thanks Jori! Yes, I guess that's the goal of these covers, right?

Alex Nabaum said...

You owned this one!
And the moon, nice touch!