Sketching the Ghouls – Ambush

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I went to the grocery store this morning to pick up a head of lettuce. There’s a lot of turkey in the refrigerator so lettuce was needed for the inevitable sandwiches I’ll be eating for the next week. And what did I hear when I walked through the sliding doors?

Christmas music.

Oh right. Christmas follows Thanksgiving. And here I am posting sketches of carrion eating troglodytes. (These are the rough sketches for interior illustrations of the Ghoul Sourcebook.)

I suppose I’ll consider these sketches a reminder of how finite our time is. That we end up as food for something – worms, fire, flesh-eating bacteria, maybe even strange ancient underground dwelling cousins. Any day above ground is a good day. We might as well celebrate while we can. Happy Holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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No ghoul posts today. Starting tomorrow I’ll be posting rough sketches for some of the interior illustrations of the book. Today I’m just hanging out with Nizzibet, eating, watching movies and probably working on some of those illustrations.

If you’re reading this in the USA, I hope you’re surrounded by as much family, friends and food as you want and enjoy. If you’re reading this elsewhere in the world hopefully you’ve got a pleasant day going, holiday or not.

Cheers y’all!

Covering the Ghouls – Part 11

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Most of the tutorials I read on painting and coloring recommend against using solid black in a painting’s shadows. Almost every time I’ve done that I’ve ended up going back and adding black into the composition. I like black. It’s one of my favorite colors. I recognize that true black rarely occurs in life. Still, I find that black helps to anchor an illustration for me.

I’m not sure if that makes sense. Anyway, here are the colored pencils with black ink shadows. The rest of the work will be done in Photoshop.