Still Pluggin' Away

Last week I sketched the figure for the 3rd of the Traveler's Tale series.  (You can see part 1 of my process here, and part 2 here.)   I glued down the castle and the tree, and added a little to the path that goes up the hill.  I always do my sketches on tracing paper so I can see more accurately how to place it, and what it will look like once it's there.  

I had a hard time with this figure, because I didn't have a live model or even a good picture to work from.  On top of that, it's quite difficult to distill a figure down to only two values.  It gives me a newfound respect for those 60's blacklight poster artists, let me tell you!

I debated with myself for a long time about whether she should be clothed.  On one hand, I wanted her to look like a stranger in a strange land, but then I just couldn't see it working with a bare butt in front of a castle- I thought that might seem so much out of place as to be distracting.  In addition, I thought maybe her dress flowing into/ merging with the pathway might be a nice compositional element.  So, I decided to go with the dress.  (Don't you just adore knowing my every mundane little thought? Ha!)

I then took the sketch of the figure and placed it on the map I had chosen, taping it down carefully with artist's tape.

Then I put the handy-dandy transfer paper underneath and went over the lines to transfer the image onto the map.

Using my trusty x-acto knife, I slowly and carefully cut out the figure.  I taped it onto the piece to see how it would look...

...and I think it looks too small!  Yikes!  It looked fine on the sketch- what's up with that?  Also, I really don't like the map I chose for the figure; it's too busy, too many words and things.  And I still have no idea what I'm going to do about those snakes in the sky.  Where's St. Patrick when you need him?

Well, I guess it's back to the drawing board...