The Making of Yoga Pose #3

Yoga pose artwork #3 is virabhadrasana B, or warrior pose B.

Virabhadra = hero or warrior
Asana = pose or posture

Virabhadrasana B is a very striking pose, made even more striking with this perspective.

I had conceived of making this yoga pose for a couple of weeks even before moving the first tile. I spent quite some time getting the colours I needed for this artwork. I think I seeded the room about 6 times before abandoning it because of frustration, and I hadn't even moved a tile yet!

I eventually came back to this artwork and actually had a couple of renditions because I didn't like the flesh colours I had initially used. This is the snapshot of the initial stages of this artwork with the original colours I had chosen.

The flesh was too pink and the artwork ultimately too large. I would have suffered severely with not enough tiles had I continued, so this particular version was abandoned and I started again.

I had to create a new colour seeding image with more browns and blacks for the hair (there wasn't enough in the first version, as you can probably see) and the flesh colours more toned down so there was less variation in colour and also a more yellow tone to the flesh.

I had also shrunk the artwork down to what I thought would be the right size so I would have more than enough tiles to complete it.

I can say now that my judgement of size was just a little bit off. I ended up shrinking down the artwork another 3-4 times near the completion because I was running out of flesh coloured tiles rapidly, as you can see:

The light coloured flesh tiles were also standing out too much instead of blending in with the rest of the skin tones. The darker skin tones were too dark and too pink, making shading less effective.

I went back to colour hunting. Lightened up the darker tiles, took out some saturation, changed the hue to slightly more yellow. Darkened down the lighter coloured flesh tiles.

This seemed to work, and I managed to be able to finish the artwork.

The hand had been reconstructed here. I did the best I could with the limited tiles I had, but it still turned out mittenish. By this time, I'm rather frustrated and annoyed with this artwork and just wanted it finished and out of the way.

But I wasn't happy with the colours yet. The darker flesh tiles were now too yellow and with not enough pink in them. The lighter flesh tiles also suffered the same problem, too yellow, not enough pink tones.

Back to colour seeding to add more pink back to the affected flesh colours. After the final finishing touches, yoga pose #3 is finished, mitten hand and all.

And to clarify a few points made in the comments: The hand looks small because it's meant to be a perspective thing, the further away an object, the smaller it appears. That was deliberate. The mitten hand was not deliberate but laziness on my part. I probably could have made it better had I not gotten really irritated with this artwork. The hidden face was deliberate, that's the perspective of the artwork, which was deliberately chosen so I wouldn't have to make a face :)

Previous yoga art blog:

Making of yoga pose #2