Black and White Samurai Painting

This was done for the dreaded Colour Principals class in my first year at the Ontario College of Art and Design. The assignment was to create something achromatic, which means no colour, just white, black, and grey. So I did a samurai, using both watercolours and coloured pencils on some cold press illustration board.

While it may not seem like there's a lot to this drawing, I think that there's a real story to be told here. He's obviously a young man, and not a happy one at that. His sandals and blanket show that he's a traveler, a bit of a nomad, perhaps. His long hair shows that he's a rebel, and the fact that he's showing off his sword like that, which is a big no-no in samurai etiquette, shows that he's a bad, bad dude with no regard for the rules, or even his own life.

Here's a close up. I was going for the pulpy, black and white TV show look. Think of this samurai in the same spirt that an American would think of a cowboy. Unfortunately, these are just photographs, so the image quality isn't that great.

This was done in October of 2001, I think. I finished it in one day, but it wasn't one of those stay up all night jobs. When I designed the character, which was much longer than one day, I tried to give him the features that girls would find attractive. I'm no expert in that matter, but he seems to have the typical bishonen look, I guess.

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