Doubled edged tongues

[GroundHog]

Announcing that Groundhog is getting off his ass and drawing another drawing.

This time I'm going to aim for one artist I admire, but could never come close to touching in style:
Alex Grey

The design I came up with was Ouroboros, the snake eating it's tail, in an Infinity sign(the sideways 8)
actually 2 snakes.in the center will be an Alex Grey esque fire.
inside each snake is gonna be a "grid of eyes"(look at his work, you'll know what I mean)
except one is gonna be in the form of an extruded space, and the other will be an intruded space. the center of each will be the brightest biggest eye(s)

Anyway, I am not hip to drawing snake scales(another reason I am drawing this)

last time I tried it, it looked extremely generically corny
Any good sites to see or books to study? eh? eh?
thanks

[GroundHog]

hmmm, well GH thats a toughie.
personally I'd just outline the snake and make sure that it looks recognizable as a snake by it's facial and body features(slit eyes, fangs, no feet or arms etc;) look at a book on snakes.

then I would draw small half oval shapes to resemble scales, in small patches along the body. That should be good enough.

[GroundHog]

you are full of crap. I would never go out the easy way.
What I AM going to do is look at the picture "Snakes" by M.C. Escher and try to get that style down. Personally I've never seen anyone else draw them as well, so that is where I will base mine off of. I am considering making a tutorial you ****ing knucklehead

[Inkthinker]

Alright, alright, funny boy...

Use photoreference, espescially Zoobooks if you can get 'em (they often have them in the kiddie section of your local public library).

Most snake scales are actually more of a diamond shape, not an oval... and the shape of the snake itslef, remember that the belly is often very flat, the spine is noticable, so that a cross-section of a snake would be more like a rounded triangle than a circle or anything.

[GroundHog]

it seems as if that'll be the hard part, portraying the spine throught he skin, like a change in depth in the skin. I think I know how to take this approach. it's gonna have to be drawn, inked, scanned, inverted, printed, inked over and finished with the rest of the content.

I'm going to search our libraries for zoobooks now.
thanks inkthinker.
I suggest you pick up a book from your library called "mission of art" by alex grey. known to most commonfolk as the dude who did the lateralus album cover for Tool.
if you are ever bored.
I checked it out yesterday and think it's pretty neat.

[GroundHog]

ugh
wonderful book
gives me reason to draw again without making $$.

drawing snakes scale by scale- - ugh

[GroundHog]

Man! this shit is ****ed up!!!

I'm sitting here trying to draw the inverted sphere of eyes.
And it looks like I may have the "correct" way of doing it finally. but it is veerrry sloppy. as well as intricate.
If I actually pull this off I will be taking a major break from drawing(like 1-2 weeks?)

I have never drawn anything this difficult due to the tiny proportions involved.
and detail was supposed to be my specialty.
I got some scans I'll be putting up tommorrow so you can see each stage in baking crap cake.

Oh and the snakes came out exactly as I wanted, diamond shaped scales with a specular spine and all.

[GroundHog]

you will never succeed.

[Inkthinker]

Post some scans of it, let's see what you've got going on.

[GroundHog]

I've got to go until tommorrow, works done (http://www.geocities.com/nonebula/stages.html)