Chaosium has posted the cover art for Secrets of Kenya with the accompanying cover text. My first thought is, of course, “That’s not how I would have done it.” Because I always think that whether I’m looking at an illustration that someone has done of one of my characters or if I’m looking at the lettering and/or text put on a comic page I’ve drawn. It’s never a comment on that person’s actual work. It’s more an acknowledgement of what had been sitting in my imagination. Then I forget all about what I’d been imagining and start getting used to what’s actually been done.

There’s still a small amount of work to be done, stuff that’s likely only noticeable to me. It’s the sort of stuff that probably wouldn’t show up in a jpeg so this will be the last post for this illustration. I’ve got a “real job” work event that I need to attend tonight so I probably won’t get the final noodling done until tomorrow morning (or tomorrow night if the siren call of the warm bed overrides the bugle of Art and Beating Deadlines). Thanks for stopping by! I’d send you a link where you could pre-order the book but neither Chaosium nor Amazon seem prepared to offer that service.

In a good magic trick, or a well told story, or even a simple joke, timing is important. The flourish, the punchline, comes at the end. Once you give that to the audience, you’re done.

I’d been intending to save the blue sky for my final post. It was supposed to be the big change that makes the whole image shine. And then I would be done. But I’m not done. I was so exhausted yesterday that I just couldn’t face noodling away on wildebeests, little shadows and minor highlights. I needed to work on big loud things to stay awake. Hence the blue sky.

There’s at least another hour or two work to be done. I’ll post the stages as I go but they’ll be quieter adjustments, smaller changes.

I don’t tell jokes too well either.

I’m functioning on way too little sleep. Nizzibet and I went down to Northern California to be part of a surprise birthday party. The party went great. The guest of honor was well and truly surprised. Much food was eaten, many great conversations were had, much alcohol was drunk, a car was pushed out of the mud, a porch collapsed, new people (and old friend’s new children) were met and a grand time was generally had. That was Saturday.

Sunday Nizzibet and I were supposed to fly out of the Oakland Airport at about 4:50. So we were dutifully there at 2:30. Where we quickly learned that our plane was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. We finally boarded and flew out of Oakland at around 10:30. After getting our car out of a long term lot in Seattle we made it home by about 2. So I didn’t get any new artwork done this weekend.

Last version before Monday. I’m not going to have access to my computer until Sunday evening at the earliest. We’re still in the making tiny adjustments stage. I think I’m finally satisfied with the idol that our heroes are perched upon. It’s finally almost dark enough.

One of the challenges I’ve got is that I’m working on a early iMac. It’s a great little machine but the monitor has gotten a little tired. Everything looks darker on it than it does on other machines. So while the idol looks practically black on my home machine it’s been looking way too cheery and christmassy on when I look at the jpegs on the Mini here at work.

I like to leave myself something big for the end of the process. Something that makes a splash. Right now we’re in the Lots of Little Details stage. Much of that is adding shading and tone to give the image texture and depth. Some of that seems barely noticeable even to me.
And so much of it is brown. Brown. Brown. Want to make an art director crazy? Tell them that you’re going to give them a brown book cover. You might as well tell them that you’re going to do your best to make sure that their book doesn’t sell and that they never hire you again. And, boy, is this image brown. Highlighting will make a difference. That comes after I’ve finished the shading.
That final big splash of color will make all the difference. But later. Patience.

And here is what the illustration looked like at 6:45 this morning. This is with all the layers on. The progress fascinates me. I’m trying to recreate an image that I saw with my mind’s eye. What I end up creating will look sort of like that image. It will never look exactly like it. The image in my mind has movement. It’s a movie clip. I’m trying to draw a frame of a movie that doesn’t exist.

1. Once the piece has been inked I go back in and add texture and shading with a B pencil. Sometimes I get obsessive and shade, smear it with a paper towel and then deepen the shading with a 2B or darker. For this illustration only one level of shading seemed necessary. I’m going to be busy enough in Photoshop.

2. Once the illustration has been scanned and put together (my scanner is only 9″x12″ and the drawing is 12.75″x16.50″) I make adjustments for contrast, convert to grayscale to remove any weird color from the image and then convert back to RGB so I can begin coloring.

3. For this illustration I’ve added a sort of sepia tone colorized layer. This both keeps me in the mood of this being a historical piece and give me a base color to work from. I’ll be working on a number of different layers back and forth.

4. This layer is, at the moment my main color layer. The colors here are put down mostly flat. Shading and highlighting will probably be added in separate layers. I’m learning to use the burn and dodge tools so I may use them on this layer. Not sure yet.

5. And here we have the illustration with all the layers turned on. Looks a bit of a mess, eh?

Inking is both one of my favorite parts of illustration and the part that makes me the most tense. It’s the part where I feel like I’m making permanent choices, where if I make a big mistake I can’t make any corrections. Since much of my work gets manipulated in Photoshop that’s not really true. I can correct for most any mistake. Still, I’d prefer not to have to. So I ink a bit. Get up. Walk around. Ink some more. Get up. Wash the brush. Flip throught a book. Ink some more.
This goes on until I either finish a piece or I give up for the day.

Bother. I’m trying to upload images from my progress on the cover but Blogger doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. So you’re getting this pointless post.