Deconstruct, Reconstruct

I have a confession to make: I can't draw curly hair. Or at least, I couldn't until this morning.

I'm working on some website goodies for the ever-lovely Myn, and currently this involves lineart of a curly-haired violin player. My initial search for pointers on how to do the hair turned up tutorials on painting (not helpful), and a few that amounted to "lol wavy lines". Not good.

My eventual salvation actually came from a finished picture, namely c85's Miss Murder. Who is, coindentally, one hell of a babe. That is what my painting of Bernadette LaRoux should have looked like.

But anyway. After I was done with the whole ogling thing, I started to take a good look at her hair. A lot of it is built *around* descending wavy lines, but not all--if you look closely, you can see C-shaped strands in rows here and there. Some of it clings in tight ringlets, some of them are looser. The artist added shadows to the parts where each section disappears back into the mass of hair, which is what gives it dimension and makes it seem shiny.

And with those things in mind, I'm taking another crack at this mane of curls. I doubt it's going to look as good as my inspiration, but it sure as hell beats a bunch of squiggles.


On a completely unrelated note, I decided to host a wee contest on DA--namely, do visual art of one of the protagonists of Tea and Sorcery for a crack at winning one of my necklaces. Most people tend to present custom drawings as prizes for such things, but I decided to go with something wearable.