Tee Off At Knackers Lane

This is the story of how my latest picture came to be.

It started last Tuesday. I decided to revisit some ideas I had back in April 2012 in my visual art diary. Here's what I drew back then. I called it 'A Scot Golfing'.

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Lots of people liked that picture. So I experimented on a few sheets of cartridge paper. Here's the first sketch...our new scanner is more powerful than the previous one, so it looks a bit more smudgy where the paper isn't completely flat. 

I then thought about how that idea might look as a book cover, hence the book spine lines.

Then I played around with how some of the elements would look, the dragon, the robot and the golfer.

That got me to the drawing. Here it is inked and ready for colour.

There's no point having a great drawing, and then ruining it with poor colour choices. So I scanned the ink version, and then printed out three copies. Once I located my Fabel Castel coloured pencils I started doing some colour experiments.

While I would have preferred a more obviously night time image, it wasn't working too well. 

So I tried twilight instead, and that was a bit easier to see foreground, middle ground and background.

But I still wasn't happy with the dragon colours, nor the robot's golf bag. 

With the colour tests done, I had a better handle on how I wanted the final picture to look. Now it was watercolour time. Here's the first wash. The blue cast to the left is where the paper was buckling despite being taped down.

The second wash dealt with the forest on the other side of the lake.

Now I've done some of the middle ground, and have begun the golfer and the robot.

It is starting to come together with some yellows, crimsons and light blues.

Now the foreground is beginning to take shape and our golfer and robot have more character. Instead of choosing a golf club, he's used the robot's arm instead.  

The tombstones are done, the dragon has a bit more colour and the foreground plant is more finished.

A bit more work, and then some paper flattening, and here's the final picture.

I'm happy with the finished result. This is the kind of work I like doing. With this week-long picture completed, I can begin working on my correspondence Diploma in Illustrating Children's Books via the London Art College.