Artisans: Jeweler (stage one)

Jeweler is a part of the Artisans series, which was conceived with lots of color and detail in mind. The number one step for this drawing, just like with any other piece, was to create a bunch of quick, rough sketches to get the basic composition down. This step I usually do digitally. It's quick, it's easy, and it saves art supplies. Oh, and it has an "undo" button. ;)

Having played around with different poses in Photoshop I settled on one that I felt worked best. With that out of the way, I began a quest for reference (more on reference here). Jeweler was inspired in large part by the culture of Thailand, in particular the traditional likae dance. As with the rest of the series, the background was supposed to represent a real-life historical artifact. Initially I wanted it to be a Buddhist tapestry, but in the end decided that the monochrome stone wall of some sort would serve better to define the colorful figure. Having looked at pictures of many different temples mainly in Thailand and Cambodia, I finally settled on the stone carvings of Banteay Srei, a 10th century temple in Angkor, Cambodia.