Let’s Make a Yeti!


(Oct 14, 2009)


Since I’ve been doing illustration work under tight deadlines, I’ve been getting used to getting ideas down quickly and not being overly precious with my drawing. So now I’ve been trying to apply those concepts to work that doesn’t require such an immediate turnaround. I don’t mean to imply that I’m throwing quality to the wind, but I have a tendency to over-labor my work. This seems like a good chance to break some of the habits that slow me down.

yeti-header

An example came up in one of my calendar illustrations. It features a yeti, and when I did my first roughs of the drawing, I didn’t give much thought to the design of the creature.  I was drawing it as sort of a giant white ape-man…. sort of a standard look in my mind for a yeti… however, I was becoming dissatisfied with this depiction.  I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel on yeti design, but I wanted a look that was a little more distinctive.

gorillaFor inspiration, I decided to look through pictures of animals, and the first image that struck me was that of a gorilla.  My initial yetis wear lean in build, and the larger mass of the gorilla seemed more imposing.  Still. this wasn’t very far from where I was when I started conceptually.


yakThen the thought came to me that yaks are prevalent in the Himalayan region, and including some of their features might make for a more interesting yeti (Just adding horns seemed like an improvement).


yetisketches

I did a few sketches testing combinations of these animals and picked out the design that seemed to worked best.

yeti-pencils

Looking back at the finished drawing, I can see lots of things I might change about the yeti’s design, but they’re mostly unimportant.  What’s important for this illustration is creating an imposing monster, and I think I accomplished that.

(Apologies for yammering on about the creation of an image and not showing the final piece.  I’d prefer to wait until I’m finished before I post it, so hopefully I’ll have it ready to show off  next week or so)

planningfailHere’s one extra bit before I sign off… a quick study of Mongolian armor that I did for the warriors that appear in the background.  Of course, they end up being barely an inch high in the drawing… I guess my over-laboring ways aren’t completely shaken yet.  In my defense, I originally planned for them to be more prominent.

l8r sk8rs!

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