Riot scene

I had this scene in mind a few months ago, and was able to return to it and work on the drawing. It’s a view of a riot from above (seen from God’s eye, or a news helicopter). I wanted to create a disturbing image that captured the chaotic, explosive violence that people can inflict on one another. I also wanted to achieve this by freezing the moment of impact, rather than portraying graphic depictions of the horrendous and gory result.

The first sketch started out as the very messy image you see below.

This group of assailants surrounding the horse became the central focus of the scene. I scribbled some other figures brawling, running, collapsed, etc., on separate sheets of paper with no particular attention to where they should be in relation to each other. I often work on my own projects with very loose doodles.

All the figures were arranged and transcribed onto a fresh sheet of Arches paper using a lightbox. At this point I made necessary changes to proportions, decided which animals to draw, and then I filled in the details while inking areas that were complete. Around the same time, I worked out the background details.

I still have a more tedious work to add to this (a lot of hatching and linework trickery) and then the piece will be done. I’ll have a full, clean scan posted here, but unil then here’s a snapshot of the drawing. And finally, here’s the final image.

View larger image here.