Major Project: Final Images w/Roughs - Image 5 "The Lady of the Moon"

This was one of the tougher images to do. I had the basic overall idea down pretty soon, I wanted a big sun in the sky and an archer shooting it down. As you can see I toyed with the idea of having the bow and arrow on its own and no figure but I thought this was a little bit abstract and so I was looking for a way to have a figure shooting an arrow at the sun. Due to the format, having the figure shooting form one of the bottom corners to the opposite top corner just wasn’t working, and so I thought it would look good to have him firing straight up in the air. This worked as it looked quite nice visually and also evoked how awkward and difficult shooting an arrow at the sun would be if it was directly above you [not to mention how far away it is obviously]. It gave the character a nice awkward look and I knew I could have him squinting and looking as though it was a difficult task.

The tough bit however was making the figure work. Initially having the figure shooting straight up in the air was making him look as though he was lying flat on his back. I needed him to look as though he was stood up straight, but firing directly upwards. And then came the problem of how his hands were holding the bow, and how this was in relation to the rest of the figure. The more realistic poses had the arms and face all in line with each other [how you would fire a bow in real life] but this was making the silhouette of the limbs and body very confused and melding them together and it just wasn’t working right. I had done some others that worked a little better but were less realistic in terms of how to fire a bow, and after some tutor advice decided this was the way to go.

I also wanted to make sure that the figure was made of mostly straight lines to evoke the tension and strain the character would be feeling when attempting to fire an arrow at the sun.

As you can see from the final image, this is clearly not how one would fire a bow in reality but I think the figure looks a lot better and it really evokes the difficulty and awkwardness of what he is doing.

Images Copyright Dan Hodgkinson 2011