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.