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.

Yesterday Nizzibet spent four hours getting her teeth deep cleaned and, most importantly, having a cracked, infected tooth removed. There’s more work in future. Seems that many of her old fillings are cracked and leaking mercury. She goes back on Monday to have that taken care of. This weekend she’ll be ensconced on the couch buzzed on Vicodin and getting treated better than a queen. At least better than I’d be interested in treating a queen. I don’t think much of queens.

I’ve made a minor adjustment to the illustration. Our damsel in distress got her position shifted in order to make sure that Chaosium’s logo doesn’t get slapped on her during production. The feminist in me wants to have her doing something other than being a Willie but I don’t know what I could have her doing that wouldn’t make the image even busier. Weilding a gun? A machete? She’s really not dressed for hunting. She seems like she was along on the safari for the scenery not the shooting of the exotic animals. I did give her boots at least. The woman in the image I was using for photo reference didn’t have those.

This is the approved base drawing that the Secrets of Kenya cover will grow from. I’m going to be making some adjustments to accomodate the text and logos that Chaosium will be putting on the cover. Updates to follow.

I’ve been commissioned to illustrate the cover of Secrets of Kenya, written by David Conyers and published by Chaosium. My deadline for the finished color art is April 3rd. Charge!