The Bear's Sons and the Trolls

The final painting.

Coming Along

Brought it to the marker comp stage. Now that takes me back to art school – haven't done marker comps forever. Haven't done grayscale images for about that long too, which is why I figured I'd better take a practice run before starting to paint. Pretty pleased with it though, so it's on to the final painting.

Well, that turned out radically different

When I posted the first version of this, I mentioned that I might change the position of the bear and the boy a tad. Instead, I completely re-did it. I got here after about half a dozen different comps (if I can get them in any sort of shape I'll post them too, but right now they look like blobs on paper, as I was trying to work out the composition).

The next step is to bring it to finish. It'll be in gray tones, instead of color, since it's an interior illustration for the book I'm working on, and in those books the illustrations are always black and white. I'll put it up again either when I'm stuck trying to figure out what to do with it, or when it's finished. Hopefully the second.

More Bear's Son Art

Now that I've finished writing the Bear's Son story, I can work on sketches of scenes that are actually in the book. In this one, the Bear's Son and Bear Cub come face to face with a troll.

I love trolls for children's stories. They're tough enough to rip cars in two, but fragile enough to turn to stone if they're exposed to sunlight. So you either have to be a superhero to take one on in a fair fight, or a five-year-old clever enough to trick one out into the sunshine. No end of possibilities for little kids to be heroes.

I compromise in my story – the Bear's Son is phenomenally strong, so he just picks the troll up and tosses it out into the sunlight.

Here's the sketch – I'm happy with the troll but the composition of the other figures and the trees seems to need a bit of work. There may be a bit of change as this gets closer to a finish.