Trying out some of the things I liked in the previous stage, focusing on how the angle of the canvas and character work together. The only one I didn't like was the vertical canvas with an high angle of the character. It made her fill out the canvas way too efficiently, leaving to little room around her than I'd feel comfortable working with. (It wasn't that bad though.)
After putting some very rough values (I lack the patience to take this step seriously unless it's for work) I realized that the high angles didn't let me see the sky (unless reflected in a puddle or something) and I really wanted to show some nice sunrise-ish colors in my painting to come.
Now here it gets a little interesting. I ended up going quite far with this one despite having been quite against the high angles so far. What happened was that I still had a difficult time letting go of the idea, as I thought it was the lack of detail in the previous versions that held them back.
That was not the case. I simply couldnt' think of anything to put in the background that'd support what I wanted the final piece to convey. Be it structures, nature or people - the piece would just feel so heavy, like the mood would be so heavy, with this angle. The details looked nice, but I couldn't quite figure out the legs. Might've been something with the hips.
At last, I landed on something different. I knew what I liked and what I thought worked in the previous ones. Only thing left to do was to put only those things in the final sketch and ditch the rest.
What I really like is the fact that the angle isn't too dramatic and leaves a lot of room for the design to be on full display. Also a little bit excited to make some more one-off designs for the other vikings in the back.
