second illustration under way

Ok so I have been beating my head against every surface available to comprehend the figure in new ways, and also armor and how it wraps around the body.  Of course I couldn't do simple medieval armor.  I had to do layers and layers of cool armor.  here are some of my pics working through some of the issues

This one below was a variation of a similar drawing done by my life drawing teacher for me as he tried to explain to me how to draw my figure in a better pose.  (my other is not shown here)  His is still much better, but until I am as good as he is this is what we get for now.

Then I set out to try and comprehend armor and how it would lay on and wrap around the boxes.  for many this may be very simple but for some reason I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around this.  I was even using references from a video game, but the textures are flat and so the form around a flat-ish box.

This was an initial sketch that I did before the above, and I quickly found out that the pose could bring problems in the shoulder area with the armor covering the face.  either I need to reduce the size of the armor (lame)  or move the head.  I have to say on a side note, that my hammer on the right side is pretty dang cool.

Then I set out trying to understand the shoulder armor.  this is the piece that eludes me more than any other.  I'm still trying to get it right...

And below we have a sketch after agonizing I just decided to go for it to see what I could get.  I think it turned out much better than I had hoped that it would.  there are still a lot of issues

the left hand needs moved and reworked, for example.  and some of the armor is messy.  the shoulder armor is smaller than I would like, but as you can see making it any bigger will defeat the purpose of what I want to do with the face.   

So anyway, the final will be a paladin channeling light through his hammer into the skull of a skeleton or otherwise undead creature.  the paladin will have his eyes lit up and the skelly will also have light bursting from the orifices in his skull.  

Im super excited to get painting this.  I will need to completely redraw it however, which I am OK with because I learn a lot every time.

All thanks to my Life Drawing instructor, Dan Scott by the way, because he sat down with me outside of class and tried his darndest to help me understand things.  I'm still trying!!!!!