Navaghiomegha

Another futuristic girl image. Rough sketch. I am putting here a close up too, for a close confrontation with the gaze. After all those years of involvement in illustration I have discerned that in living characters, especially, intelligent beings (be them human beings, humanized cartoon animals or fantasy aliens) the gaze is very important. It is the decisive suggestion conveying the sense of aliveness. The main thing endowing an illustration creature with actual life. But it has to come out intuitionally and spontainously, by grace, as I have noted before (let say that this applies to everything, generally in life, I believe). The spontainous rough sketch is very important, in general, and needs a delicate sensitivity not to loose its aliveness after the ‘clearing’ process. The clearing should be only a pious ‘clothing’ of the alive initial sketch and absolutely nothing more.

As to this spontainity issue somebody may be helped essentialy by studying old good Zen ink paintings.

Further, one other thing I consider of very central importance, regarding the gaze, is that the eyes should have always a very deep black pupil. The specularities on the eye are to be put so that they may convey only the glass like clarity of the curveous surface of the eye ball, not hindering (although they may overlap it partially) the deep black hole of the eye pupil. The eye pupil’s darkness is the element giving all the existential depth to the whole character. It is the element making it alive, the point through the most essential communication, beteween him/her and you occurs. Throuh his/her pupil you are mirrored in his/her conciousness, as the same happens in an inverse direction, of course.

I am dropping those notes here because I know, from my own personal experience, that if somebody had told me about such delicacies in drawing some two decades before I could have the opportunity to progress in a more easy way maybe.