Last Embrace

I created this piece as an attempt to join the Month of Love creative movement.  This was supposed to be for the 2nd week’s theme, Innocent.  The idea was that the love was forever locked in an innocent embrace.  Even as the lovers fade away, they are still forever embracing.  I wanted to try a different process than I how I normally pull together an image, which is a brief sketch followed by intense detail starting at the figure and working my way out and around until the piece is done.  I want to try other artist’s process that I’ve read about or seen in their video demos.  

I started out with some small thumb nails of the idea that I had in mind.  

Then I sketch the thumb nail on larger paper with a red col-erase pencil.  

I added some darker value with brown.  

I transfer the rough sketch using my light pad and finalize the detail on good paper.  

Using a 2B pencil I then go over all the areas that I wanted shaded.  

I slowly build up the dark area with darker pencils.  

As the dark areas got darker, the details emerged, some on their own, others are planned.  This is a simple image but I hope in working this way, I can build a better composition.