Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

An actual, relatively quick sketch. I was playing around with a few different ideas and then decided I wanted to draw someone with their hand above their eyes, more like they're looking out into the distance, rather than into the sun. After a couple of false starts (e.g., the shoulder is usually not significantly above the head), I drew the head and torso. But then I figured I'd draw the rest and decided he should be leaning forward, intently.

About halfway through, I figured, he could be leaning on something, so his feet could be uniformly behind him giving a more linear/angular lean to his body. But what was he leaning on? A railing seemed easy. Attached to, um, something. A platform! Sure, why not. Then I figured it could be up high, like maybe in the mountains. Not at the top of everything, since there'd be no background.

Where'd it come from? Who knows. It's some sort of overlook jutting out into the open space. Then I did some hatched lines for shading the hills a little to add some texture and a suggestion of shape and indicator of the light source, which I only halfway considered, and not in any consistent way.

And then, as a completely afterthought, I considered what I could add to the sky since that was pretty boring. And I thought maybe a bird. A big bird. Flying towards him. No, swooping towards him. Um...like talons first and...oh dear, this seems to have taken on a new direction. Well, who am I do force a narrative onto this? So I just went with the flow. Since it was intended as a quick sketch, I'm fine with it.

I used Krita, so I could play with some different brush types than Photoshop has, and use my Wacom. Only at the end, when I was thinking of the title, I was thinking either "look out below" or a more appropriate variation, "look out above" but then decided just to shorten it to "lookout" and realized that's a word for his role, what he's doing, and what he should be doing behind him. Huzzah! Full size drawing is here.