The warrior Björn Ragnarsson from Vikings Tv series.
The idea of drawing a male character integrated into an environment was a mini personal challenge that I really wanted to do, a level up in which to kill two birds with one stone. Try to draw a cold environment, put snow, wind ... I really enjoyed doing this illustration. Later I started to do some backlight effects. These are the two versions of the illustration:
For some time, the technique I'm using is based on stains. With the black brush at half opacity I stained the canvas determining the pose and the composition and from there I build the figure with color. Trying to get my illustrations to have more detail thanks to the work of color and stain instead of the profile and the realistic virtuosity that I always pretended in the university, I like that hyperrealistic intention but in animation I learned that it is not practical and that you can get more impressionistic and fresh results based on stains and text.
I made this portrait of the warrior Björn Ragnarsson based on the actor Alexander Ludwig of the series "Vikings". Pure fan art and good cartoon.
I really like this series, when it started I read that The History Channel intended to make a documentary series that accurately represented what was the Viking era. Honestly, my knowledge of the Viking people was a mix between the fantasy of cartoons, legends and thealittle that appeared in my history book at school. In short, helmets with horns of "Vicky the Viking", the a potion that prepared the Druid Panorámix in "Asterix the Cock" and that were a town of armies so violent and unforeseeable that there was no need of tactics, based on looting And axes reached the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea ...
Now that I'm writing it, I'm not liking it at all! Luckily, the series, aroused my curiosity and expanded and renewed this information in my head contrasting series with documentaries and other texts. While it is true that there are real data also there are many theories unresolved but it is clear that they did not have helmets with horns, it is possible that the magic potion existed as a hallucinogenic fungus and that they were violent but also good strategists, Launched into the open sea, successful traders and women also participated in the warriors.
There are many more historical data but I will focus on my illustration. I do not usually do many male characters, nor elaborate backgrounds and one day I tried to start with that sounded on my player "If i had a heart" by Fever Ray (song of the intro of Vikings and singer that I also knew thanks to the series) as well That I began to draw lines from the face of Björn Ragnarsson. I chose this character (this actor) because some faces I find very "cartoonizable" and this is one of those cases, also a character that in its beginnings did not attract much attention and little by little has taken on a very interesting importance Which, to me, shades that of being "son of". In the series he is considered the first Viking to plan to reach and conquer the Mediterranean (I read that first of all, but he did get much more than the previous ones) and that makes him a possible Viking of those who spoke to us at school, Although they never gave us names.
I thought the first thing I would do would be Ragnar Lodbrok but any day I do Ladgerda, Flóki or Ivar Ragnarsson, they also have history to scrutinize and they are very "cartoonizable"!
What do you think? :)
