First of all I knew I wanted to do something twice as big as my last piece, and I also wanted to try a color palette I hadn't used much in the past. I decided on a cool color palette focusing mostly on purples since the painting was intended to hang in my living room and the purple would look nice with the yellowgreen walls :) I also knew I wanted to paint a gryphon since I never have before.
I started by researching eagles and lions and was happy to find lots of cool action poses for reference.
It was a fun challenge to find the right combination of poses that I thought would make the ideal attack pose for a gryphon. I also decided I wanted to have a rider on the gryphon so there would be some sort of teamwork between rider and mount to slay an unwelcome wyvern.
After many thumbnails I arrived at the composition above. First I did a quick color/value study, which I then used as reference when doing the final line drawing, which I then digitally painted on top of for my final study before the actual painting.
Here is the next month's worth of painting sessions (roughly each frame was one sitting) You'll notice a few things changed quite a bit from the color study and also during the painting. Things like the windows and the wyverns head I ended up repainting to make sure I really got them right. It was painful but I learned a lot by not being complacent.
And the finished piece.
Nightwatch
17x24.5 on canvas
I'm really starting to like acrylic, I have a lot of experimentation to do with this new medium, and I'm definitely not as proficient with it as I would like to be. I would also like to try painting on masonite or illustration board. The canvas texture is nice but can be annoying at times, especially getting a good photo.
If anyone has any ideas for a new challenge for me to try I would love to hear it! Otherwise I will hopefully have a new painting for you in a month or two.
