Work went pretty quickly from here. I copied over the flat colors the Photoshop file of my earlier attempt at coloring this image. I had to make a few adjustments since the new scan didn’t match the scan of the original pencils. And, obviously, some of the colors needed to be changed to go with the new base colors.

Having decided that the previous coloring track wasn’t working I stepped away from the computer and went back to work on the original pencil illustration. I put my colored pencils to work. I tossed down some solid black lines. Things started looking better already.

This is the point where I decided that, really, more work in this direction wasn’t going to produce the result I was looking for. The art was muddy and lacked contrast and just seemed sloppy. While it was possible I might eventually get a piece I liked I’d be getting there by trial and error and it would probably take more time than was sensible. So I had to go back to the original drawing.

No posts tomorrow or Sunday. It’s a busy busy weekend, the capper of which will be the Bro getting married in California on Sunday night. Since I’m flying back Monday morning and putting in a full day at work afterwards I may not post on Monday either. Sorry about that.

More texture and shading added. The pattern on the ghoul’s robe is a transparent layer of snakeskin.

On another layer I began “painting” (in Photoshop) shadows and tones.

Once the flat colors are all laid down I turn on the extra layers of linework to see where more color might be needed.

The next step is to add in a layer of flat color.

I keep thinking that I’m going to be able to create a color image directly off the penciled art. So far I’ve only managed to do that once. But I keep trying. This is the second stage of the process. I’ve colorized the original pencils. This is primarily to give me a base color to work with. Since the scene takes place in a dark place I thought I’d use blue as the base.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m illustrating a sourcebook on Ghouls for Sixtystone Press for the Call of Cthulhu RPG game. Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting preliminary sketches and works in progress.

Today’s post features the rough sketch for the book’s back cover illustration. This is a priest of Mordiggian the charnal god of the city of Zul-Bha-Sair. The priests only take off their masks when it’s feeding time.