Saturday 2 July 2011

A knight and a ghost

This image will be published in Spectrum 18 this autumn.

I thought I should show some images to explain the process of this illustration. I originaly had this idea of a stone tomb surrounded by dancing ghosts. I did a little thumbnail, scanned it in and tried some different colour palettes. My girlfriend said it was a boring picture and that I should get closer to the subject if I wanted to get more emotion into it.

So I tried out this composition, and instead of lots of dancing ghosts there's just one, whispering something to the dead/sleeping? knight, who is not made out of stone anymore.

After trying out colours on the second thumbnail I worked up a tighter drawing, using reference for all the things I didnt know how to draw. I scanned it in and finishied it digitally. The ghost girl went through the most changes and I ended up rotating her head around as you can see in the final image.

7 comments:

  1. Wow the final piece is beautiful!

    Thank you for sharing the process too, the steps are just as interesting to look at.

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  2. Awesome painting dude, and I love the colour thumbnails as much as the final painting!

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  3. thanks for your comments guys!

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  4. Great artwork Simon, I really like this one. Also love the palette in your little studies.

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