In my last post, I discussed an idea for a drawing related to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I wanted to sketch Roland and his crew outside of Lud, probably by a campfire. In the first article, I talked about some of the challenges I anticipated based on my limitations as an artist. My strength, I think, is drawing people from live subjects or photos. My biggest weaknesses are drawing scenery and drawing from imagination. Once I get outside of the main subjects, I think the quality of my sketches degrades. And coming up with a scene that only exists in my head is a major challenge for me. Before I go on, I’ll include this warning as I did in the first post; there may be some light spoilers from Dark Tower books 1-4. And please don’t post any spoilers from later books in the comments, because I’m still on book 4.
This piece turned out just okay; not awful, but definitely with some flaws. When I was sketching the ka-tet (a group bound by fate, if you haven’t read the books), Eddie and Susannah did not really turn out how I always imagined them. But the pencil went where it wanted to go, and I didn’t want to force it and possibly wreck the drawing. Roland and Jake are mostly how I imagined them though. You may notice some remnants to Roland’s left; I tried to include Oy the Billybumbler, but I was unsatisfied with how he turned out. He’s like a raccoon mixed with a dog, and my representation didn’t seem right.
I had a few details I wanted to make sure I included, and I did remember to add them fortunately. Susannah is missing her legs below the knee, and Roland’s lobstrocity-mangled hand is there. Jake has the all-important joke book in his lap, and Eddie and Susannah are eating Gunslinger Burritos. I was able to get Lud in the background, and I think the size/perspective ratio is on point…the implementation isn’t great though. But hey – it’s scenery, not my best skill.
I’ll include the drawing progression below, with a link to the first post about this at the end:
First post on this topic, planning and discussion: https://jonamdall.com/2017/10/08/planning-for-a-dark-tower-drawing/