The difference two years can make.

Another year, another thrown weapons scroll

  

This is the second time I have made this design. The first time was back in April 2014 to kick off my Alphabet Challenge (top image). The bottom image was completed the other day. The image is from one of my favorite period manuscripts, The Hunterian Psalter (f101r). The top image was done on Arches paper with Reeves gouache and Holbein gold. The bottom image was also done with Reeves gouache but on Fluid paper with FineTec "Arabic gold". 

As I said in a previous post, the FineTec gold is a lot shinier than the Holbein, although it is hard to tell from the scan. I kept to similar colors, as both were made for Baronial tournaments (the colors of the Rhydderich Hael are green, black and yellow).

One thing I noticed, after I had completed the second scroll, is that even though I was using the same paint for the color, I was using far less of it than my technique from two years earlier. And it wasn't just this scroll, I was using less paint on pretty much everything I was working on. The man and the centaur use the same tubes of green and brown, but on the top image, I used 5 or 6 coats of each, while on the bottom image, I only used 3 layers.

Without realizing it, I was instinctively making the images lighter, using the shading to bring depth to the figures instead of making the figures dark and using highlights to keep the images from being dark blobs.

Notice the legs of the man: In the top image, the chauses are all back with a line of white to give them a sense of depth. The white indicating where light would hit the fabric if they were 3D. Whereas, in the bottom image, I used two layers of the same black gouache, the first very thinned down and the second only on the right hand side. With a line of white on the right-hand, outside side give a much greater appearance of rounded legs.

It is nice to know that I am still capable of improving.