I spent about three times as long on this week’s entry as I did on last week’s Ahab, and I’m about half as happy with it. But, here she is:

B is for Brienne, Maid of Tarth – From A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

In the book, Brienne relates being mocked by a group of knights who would present her with roses, ostensibly to woo her. She never actually lops off one of their hands–but she probably should have. While Googling to find passages from the books that describe her, I was pretty stunned to find that the actress who plays her on the TV show is a model. There’s obviously a lot of room for interpretation when it comes to visualizing a character from the book, but there are two things that are 100% part of Brienne’s deal: she’s big and she’s ugly.

I’m wanting to use AlphaBooks as a way to really push my character designs and part of my disappointment with this drawing is that it’s pretty squarely in my character design “comfort zone.” I initially explored a more Olive Oyl-esque design (right, below), but sort of naturally drifted back to more familiar territory:

I also am wanting to use AlphaBooks to work on exaggerating pose and gesture. This pose isn’t terrible, but it’s still a bit stiff. I managed to get the shoulders and hips at opposing angles–which is a “must have” for most good, dynamic poses–but she’s got a pretty stiff spine which lends her a fairly static “line of action.” I struggled a lot with this gesture for sure, as you can see here (progressing left-to-right):

Additionally, I had to tackle chainmail, which I’ve never really dealt with (well, other than goofy childhood D&D drawings anyway). I found this great tutorial online which helped a lot. Curiously, the most successful chainmail in this drawing is my very first whack at it, under her arm:

It was a really good learning experience, though. If I have to draw chainmail again I’m going to (1) have the rows be wider, (2) rough in folds first, then have the mail rows follow the contours of the folds, and (3) use a different, stiffer pen for the circles–maybe a technical pen type thing.

Anyway, onward to “C.”

Brienne was drawn with graphite and colored pencils, digitally inked and screen-toned in Digital Manga Studio, and colored in Photoshop.

And it begins…

A is for Ahab – from Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I’m glad I escaped high school without some teacher forcing me to read Moby Dick at age seventeen. I’m sure I would have hated it and never touched it again. In fact, I first read Moby Dick in my early 30s and it immediately became one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve re-read it once since then and it’s for sure on my short list of books that I’ll probably continue to re-read every so often for the rest of my life. There are a lot of passages in the book that I really, really love, but Ahab here has a line that’s maybe my favorite sentence in the English language:

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.

This–the conclusion of Chapter 58–is also one of the greatest passages ever written:

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

The illustration was penciled by hand, inked digitally in Manga Studio, and colored in Photoshop. You can find info on the color halftone/off-register effect I’m using here at the JohnnyCrossbones website.