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They Stood Against the Sky · Original Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
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the heads of everybody turn away from me
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#1 · 2
· · >>Hap
I love this picture. It feels like it should be hung on the walls of a haunted house in a horror movie.

Nice thing you did there with the eyes. Nobody has them, they were all taken by the wolf.

I don't know if I'm biased or not but this style of painting is a favorite of mine if done well. And it is. The clothes on everyone look perfectly done with the creases getting the perfect amount of...crease. The birds' and human's head are done literally perfectly. The shading on their faces is magnifique. (hon hon hon)

One of my criticisms on this is that one of the eyes look like an anime eye. I know it might be just nitpicking but the realisticness on it is way below the rest of the painting so it sticks out a bit. Also, the eagle's arm is a bit wonky. If the joint went in rather than out it would make more sense.

Overall this is on my list of favorites. Love the style, the medium, and the picture portrayed.

Keep drawin'. ;)
#2 · 2
· · >>Hap
This is a really interesting image, but it's also quite clean. It's pretty macabre, but also just pretty.

The strokes are calculated for an ink brush. It looks lovely. The style is almost like the kind of thing you'd see in an old book illustration, like a Canterbury Tales drawing. Speaking of which, I noticed some text in the background. I was wondering if this drawing was done on the back of a page of some sort, but then the letters should appear in all the characters' white space. I tried to take this image and up the contrast to see if I could read it, but I can't make out the script. It looks like Latin maybe, and if not that, then maybe just old print. I could vaguely make out the 'ſ' long s. I'm interested in knowing what it says!

This is a very interesting drawing. Well done!
#3 · 2
· · >>Hap
This looks like a freaky mutant version of a book I read while I was studying environmental sciences. The book had hand drawn pictures of things that looked almost identical to this style for the animal parts. This picture actually really freaks me out, you have succeeded at raising my hackles.

The lines are remarkably clean, the canvas has faded writing on it. I have no idea how you managed this, even with photoshop.
#4 · 2
· · >>Hap
Wow. You're obviously exceedingly skilled in this medium; I have a hard time with line variation using a ballpoint pen! The clarity you've given to the forms here, using just black lines of various widths, absolutely floors me.

I'm also impressed by what you've done with the hands. I read a blurb by an artist once about how hands are second only to faces for portraying emotion; you've clearly grasped that here. Even without lips/eyes, the attitudes of the characters are clearly displayed.

I will say, I had to stare at that dog for a good twenty seconds before I realized it was a dog with weird eyes, not some eye-blob monster. I think that's because the nose/browline almost merges with the back, and the... I'm not sure what that shape is. Is it a closed eye? That curved line on its ear kept me from recognizing either the ear or nose immediately.

I'm also curious about the words in the background. The alt-text says 'ink brush on paper'; did you add the words manually? Did you use stationary of some sort and erase the words from the silhouettes somehow? Inquiring minds want to know!

This is probably my favorite so far; a demonstration of excellent technical skill, composition, polish, and intriguing weirdness that won't be easily beaten.
#5 ·
·
I have so many questions...

On a purely artistic level, this might be the best of the entries. The lack of color is striking, and I can tell the artist was confident enough in his/her style to exhibit that kind of restraint, and even the lack of background is great.

The outlines, assuming this was done digitally, are incredible. They're consistent between characters, but there's still some variation in thickness, and the overall composition of the image is great.

But then there's something about the proportions that makes me raise an eyebrow. Let's get over the fact that these are half-bird people and look at how their heads are sized in relation to their bodies. It's very weird, and not necessarily in a good way, because now I'm wondering how some of these people (like the pelican) would even move around with heads that big.

I can't tell if the human(?) is wearing anything, and I'm wondering why there is this one human with these bird people.

The wolf is uhh... huh. It stole their eyes? I wonder why. That could make for a great story, but just as an image it makes me scratch my head. I'm assuming the wolf is villainous, but it's also right in the center, between all these people, so did it sneak in there? Why is everyone facing outward, as if surrounded by something outside of the boarders?

I'm sure someone will write a story to give some interesting answers, but right now I do have some mixed feelings on this entry.
#6 · 1
· · >>Hap
Slick, precise lines in the most unforgiving of media, and creepy evocative figures, surrounding an unwholesome central mystery. A top tier piece.
#7 · 7
· · >>Miller Minus >>Moosetasm
>>Anon Y Mous
>>Roseluck
>>Moosetasm
>>Not_A_Hat
>>GroaningGreyAgony

Thanks! This was a fun piece to create. All I could think of to draw was what I assumed everyone was going to do (and nobody did!): a character or pair standing resolute, with the camera low and looking up, showing them against the background of a sky swarming with some sort of enemies (creatures, ships, whatever).

Then I thought... what if "the sky" was a cabal of individuals - human or creature - against whom the characters were standing? But why would they be "the sky?" Because they're birds, of course! I was inspired by the sort of strange medieval art with fantastic beasts and people with animal heads, and immediately started looking up references.

I liked the way that medieval art was just slightly unsettling in the way they drew people. So I spent hours in front of a mirror, trying to pose my body like those manuscripts. Some of you mentioned the eagle's arm looking odd. Well, that's based on my posing in front of the mirror and taking pictures. You try standing at a 45 degree angle and holding one arm back behind you, palm out. Plus, it looked vaguely wrong, and I wanted it to be a bit unsettling.

The title of the piece was lifted from a heavily distorted song which has exactly one line that's clear enough to distinguish. I changed it a bit to read: "the heads of everybody turn away from me"

Whoever these creatures are, they are turning away from the dog and the girl. They are shunning them. And despite the fact that they have turned their heads, all eyes are on the dog.

I wanted to make the girl stand out, so I used a very modern form for her shape, as opposed to the medieval poses and body shapes of the bird creatures.

As to the text, I noticed that a lot of illustrations from the middle ages had visible text bleeding through from the other side. So, I looked up high-resolution images of medieval manuscripts, and ended up with a 15th century Italian pseudo-Augustinian manuscript by Olivetan monks. I cropped it and printed it, then drew on the back of it.

I like the clean lines of an ink brush. India ink. Plain printer paper takes it well. I like the ability to do hair-thin lines or thick strokes with the same tool.

I could see the text on the other side of the art, but didn't like the letters inside the characters, so I turned it over, stuck a desk lamp under my glass-top drawing table, and used a white paint marker to color in the characters that I could see through the paper. But when I scanned it, none of the letters showed up anyway!

So I stuck a mirror behind the page, and closed the scanner lid, and the light shining through the page and reflected back was enough to illuminate the letters! The white marker was opaque enough to prevent the letters showing through on the characters.

Then I scanned a sheet of coarse, unbleached paper and used that as a texture filter over the whole thing, and messed with the contrast and such.

Thanks everyone!
#8 · 2
·
>>Hap
This comment is such an adventure in resourcefulness.

Well deserved medallist!
#9 · 2
·
>>Hap
Sir. If I wore a hat, I would take it off to you for that kind of dedication and innovation in creating the image. That is just... remarkable.