More silhouettes

I have to say I didn't enjoy my previous experience with silhouettes last year, in the first project where we were creating silhouettes based on a very specific character (in my case a napoleonic era 'soldier'). The silhouette process did prove useful as the character I ended up creating was so far from what I would have ever designed if I had the freedom to instantly start drawing as soon as I thought of something, I felt that the limitations made it very restrictive and I had a hard time differentiating one silhouette from another. However in this project having freedom to design essentially whatever I want and with no limitation to how many silhouettes I have to produce I am enjoying the process a lot more and I feel like I am really feeling the benefit of quickly drafting out designs without going into detail rather than feeling like it is just holding me back from refining a design that I like.

After the disappointing yield of silhouettes last time around, before I discovered the new brush, I decided this time to go into the process with more of an idea of what I was going to do in mind before starting. I wanted to see how I could use the brush to influence me creatively so I chose a colour different from the red I used before (which was really just an arbitrary choice) and use that to influence what I draw, I took a sort or seaweed green and with that in mind started creating something like sea creature monsters.

Playing around with the seamonster idea I starting drawing the arms as tentacles, but very soon I started thinking of them almost like big roots or something, so I started creating more plant like monsters and golems. By that time I had become a lot more loose with the silhouettes and I think '7' was probably the most dramatic and interesting based on detail, gesture and energy but over all I think my favourite personally is number 4 or 5, while they are not particularly interesting at this stage I feel that they have the most potential to be taken further and iterated onto. While 7 is easily the most interesting to look at of the bunch it is kind of a generic flower monster I think and doesn't really have a whole lot of potential for development. I do quite like the idea of the tiny flower face of silhouettes 6 and 8 though, they have a sort of creepy feeling to them which I like, I certainly would be going for a 'horror' aesthetic with these silhouettes if I am to take any of them further.