I’ve selected Cutthroat for this week.

The brief for this was “Woman slashing the throat of a shop keeper” which I kind of interpreted as “Mad pretty lady violently taking a hostage with a carving knife”.

Since we’re working in black and white for the interior, I don’t have to worry about colour, just light and composition.

I got some reference for screaming women and knives and started to paint away. I wanted a Chiara Scura style with a dark background and lit foreground figures. I was happy enough with the initial basic composition but I didn’t like the pose and I thought the woman looked a bit too psychopathic. Later I reverted to the psychopathic version over the teenager as she was more fun. Once I had blocked out the clothes and hair on the woman and changed the head of the man back to the smaller version I thought I was pretty much finished and I left it for a couple of days.

I came back to it today and decided to change everything. The pose on the lady was odd and her neck was too long and the butcher looked “already dead”. I pushed his expression as well as bringing the head of the woman closer and scaling it. At this stage I was asked to sex it up a little so I changed the girl’s pose so we could see some cleavage. I also wasn’t happy with the impact of the hand in the foreground so I altered the thumb to add more drama.

There was a big jump next where I continued to add detail like her clothes, stronger light and hair. This was finally starting to look finished. After a quick show around I was asked to clarify the action as it was a bit ambiguous. I refined the woman’s hand and re-added the knife, knocked back the cartoon-ish victim’s head and added some blood. Finally I re-added some lighter areas to push the characters off the back ground.

Next week I hope to finish Nail girl. See you then.