I’m not as good a colorist as I’d like to be. I have a hard time knowing how to balance colors. Color is a tool and one of the best ways to learn how to use to tools is to restrict the uses of them. For this illustration, I decided to stick with just purple (for the shadows of the cave) and yellow (for whatever the light source is).

How does it look?

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.