A Few Comments.

I just wanted to give a short reply to your last post.

First off, the value study. It looks damn good, I'm especially impressed by the placement of the birds, and that HAIR, man. Dang, good job. The one noticeable thing that I'd like to comment on is that the figure looks short - and I mean in an 'anatomically incorrect' way and not in a 'typical dwarfish Japanese person' way. I think what happened is that the figure is being viewed from a top-down angle - this is suggested by the positioning of the top half of the body, as well as the implied perspective from where the dress lays on the 'floor' - but the perspective gets a little lost on the lower half of the body in the dress. It's a combination of the dress from the waist downwards seeming rather flat value-wise, and it's also getting scrunched at the bottom because of the cropping, both of which are contributing to the bottom half of the body flattening out instead of seeming in-perspective. Because of this it looks like she has very short legs underneath her dress. I think that if you were to give her a little more space at the bottom of the frame, and use that space to round out the cone-shape of her dress to match the perspective that her dress has behind her, it would give the bottom of the piece the same amount of dynamism that the upper part already has. It might need a bit more shadow/highlight on the skirt to really give a sense of volume, but maybe not after the perspective is dealt with.

Also, thanks for the advice on Sympathy for the Tyrant. I was sort of meaning to draw attention beyond the frame with the finger, as a continuation of the Tyrant leading his men onward - but you're right, it's not entirely convincing from a compositional standpoint. I'm definitely gonna play with the values in the curtain a little more, and the other thing I'm messing around with is how the color affects the composition. I think that if the value on the finger leads the eye off the frame to the left slightly, I might be able to draw the eye back as long as the color on the right is strong enough (the flag, for example, is gonna be blood red). Anyway, we'll see. And you're also right that I'm painfully aware how much more fresh my drawings look than my finishes. Although I haven't yet created any finished work in my studio, I've been playing around a lot with the basic technique that I was using for my thesis and it's gotten a LOT more loose and exciting. There were certain figures in my thesis pieces that I felt pretty satisfied with, even if the compositions on the whole still felt a little static, and I'm confident that I can get more energy into the whole composition after the amount of time I've spent tweaking it. It's definitely a different type of energy than my drawings, so I'm very interested to see how this piece translates into ink.

Lastly, because you asked for a reminder on the subject of the piece, here goes:

Humans, in their continual search for a meaningful existence, are quick to sympathize with a leader who seems capable of seeing beyond the immediate trivialities that encumber our everyday lives. Humans individually see themselves as weak, or lacking. This is why we have an Original Sin, and why we use "Human" as an adjective the way that we do - "I'm only human". We need someone who can guide us towards a sense of purpose and progress, someone that can combine our individualistic tendencies into a powerful group of like-minded people. There are many examples of leaders doing this by associating with 'Higher Powers' - claiming to be partially deified themselves, able to talk to God, or simply having God on their side. This is why I include the religious aspect of the angels within the piece.

The more sympathy that a society has for a leader, the more capable of being a tyrant that leader is - many times the leader squeezes sympathy out of the populace through propaganda, or by making charismatic speeches, or by creating an environment of fear that the leader promises to fight or save the populace from.

The problem, ultimately, is that the leader is just as human as everybody else - he or she is caught up in the same continual trivialities, as well as self-centered desires and familial obligations. Whether they truly believe that they are progressing a society forward, or are taking advantage of their power for more personal reasons, the leader is no more capable of seeing the salvation of his/her society than many of the other members of the society. And yet they must lead, and they attempt to muster their people's sympathy into a single purpose. And some times that purpose clashes with another society's purpose, particularly if the leader has instilled his people with fear. And often enough, these clashes become violent.

In my piece I am examining the "sympathy for the tyrant" in several ways: The sympathy that a group of people is instilled with for that tyrant - in the piece one sees the military as the sympathizers, mainly, since the piece also is focused most immediately on the unfortunate violence that comes with strong group convictions; and the viewer's sympathy for the tyrant as a strong leader who is necessary for a society at certain times, no matter how despicable or commendable the tyrant's acts as a leader end up being. We also see the humanoid bat creatures that are being fought - they have been dehumanized to the soldiers through fear instilled by the tyrant, yet to the 'bat creatures' themselves, the soldiers probably lack just as much humanity, hence the ambiguity of their faces.

"Sympathy for the Tyrant", to me, is a question. Will humans always need the strong command of a tyrant at certain points in their history? Even within democratic societies, the past eight years have painfully taught us how possible it is to twist a nation's sympathy into a more tyrannical situation - and the violence that is created by such a situation. Can such violence ever be avoided?

...Whew, longer than I thought, okay.