Cameron K. Lewis Sketchblog: May 2011

First off, I apologize for the lack in posting. I've been storyboarding on a very exciting project that I'd love to share sometime down the road. For now, it will have to stay secret. On to the new work...a western!
When I have the time to work on a personal piece, I take it as an opportunity not only to experiment with new techniques or papers or brushes, but also to create distinct scenes from imaginary movies that I want to see.
In this case, I wanted to marry two distinct worlds; the violent carnage of a Cormac McCarthy western and the wide angled, almost magical look of a Terrence Malick film.
In creating this new promotional piece, I wanted to build a scene from my ideal western; none of the low, tight angles of the spaghetti westerns, but instead a marriage of the rawness and carnage of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian of the Evening Redness in the West and Terrence Malick's gorgeous and almost magical Days of Heaven.

Like a Malick movie, I wanted to develop a scene that would instantly convey a story and a palpable feeling through a simple image.
Once again, I used my roommate Bryan for some reference photos (with a shotgun mic as a substitute for a revolver) as well as myself for some tweaks in the pose.

After several rounds of sketches and some reference research into the clothing, architecture, weapons and crops of the period, I started the drawing. This piece is the first time I'm using Stonehenge bristol instead of my normal Arches watercolor paper, as I hoped to get cleaner lines with my brush.

Then came the arduous task of coloring the stalks of barley.

The linework is combined with the color. I threw a rim light and a mysteriously bloody hand, a stand-in for war paint, on the main character.

To compliment the piece, I did a smaller spot of the farmer's daughter. The idea is that she is working somewhere else on the farm away from the house and comes running at the booming sound of a gun going off.