Contrast is an important part of any good illustration. Once I’d done my standard Photoshop adjustments, I worked on emphasizing the light source on the Silurian. If this piece were intended to be black and white, I’d stop here. Since I want the final piece to be color, I’ve got another step to take.

The next step, once I’ve got an ink and graphite version that I like, is to scan it into Photoshop. In Photoshop, I clean up the most errant pencil lines, add some layers, apply the gaussian blur tool and do some general tweeking.

Since a direct digital drawing of the Silurian isn’t something I wanted to attempt at the moment, I rendered a final version of the Silurian in ink with graphite shadings. I could just leave the illustration alone at this point but I’ve got other effects I like to add.

In Morgo the Mighty, the Silurians are a race of scale-skinned humans who obey the commands of the evil Zorimi. I’ve got plans to adapt and illustrate Morgo but those plans are long term. I’ve got a lot of other projects to complete before I can dedicate much time to that. I can, in the meantime, do some development illustrations.

The image in today’s post is the base sketch for one of those illustrations.