Nethbane Cover

Double-post Friday!! Oh my goodness gracious!

So a couple of screen captures of my working on this surfaced some months ago, and I figure that I'm far along enough with the manuscript of Nethbane that I can safely put up a final cover image. I had finished it before and then decided that I was really unhappy with the shading on the central figure, so I went back and reworked it and am now so much more satisfied. I think that the much darker shadows along the wyvern just really help to convey some drama. The red of the photo I used also complements the darkness nicely, and this is much more the image I had in mind when I first started sketching ideas for this cover.

The sketch for the wyvern and it's rider was actually done on a piece of 14"x8" paper and then scanned into the computer. I had to piece the wings together from there to get a single image, since the line work was bigger than the paper I was using. The shading technique I used here for much of the shadows is the method of using a solid black fill on a layer above the colors, then adjusting the opacity and erasing out places where I wanted more vivid color to show through.

The photo was actually taken without any filters, believe it or not. I just happened to be in a canyon during a summer rainstorm and was standing on a point during the sunset where I could see more rainclouds further down in a little valley. I love how vividly those colors captured. And I totally recommend Canon cameras.

One more little thing I'd like to mention: I tried converting the color of the author name at the bottom to a blue similar to the title, but it didn't look as good to me, so I stuck with red.

Orange

Bleh. It's interesting (not really) how getting sick will knock your whole schedule off the rails.

Here's another of my earlier years of the digital camera. It may look kind of blurry, sure, but I still love it very much. I love sky.

Thingy!!

Okay, I need to go to bed and my hand is fast becoming stiff, so OPINIONS, PLEASE!

My problem? Gold is very shiny. It's also difficult to color. Please let me know what you think of the lighting thus far in this thumbnail. There's something bugging me, but I'm having trouble finding and fixing it. The head in particular looks too messy to me on the shading.

So comment away on the lighting of this. Yes, that means you. And don't worry about hurting my feelings. I want constructive criticism! You are helping me to preserve my sanity!

Glowing drake

Holy cow! How did it get to be 11:30 pm? It's waaay past my bedtime, so let's make this fast.

This goes along with some of the creature mugshots I've already posted. I accidentally made the canvas a lot bigger than the others, so I was able to add more detail. For reference, the others have all been done on a canvas of 1000x1000 pixels. This one was 1800x1800. Almost twice as big - whoops! I did some different coloring techniques with this mug than I have done in the past, which turned out looking nice on the texture of the scales. I started shading the neck and it was very blotchy, as it sometimes is, but I thought, "Huh, that looks kind of fun!" So I tried not to do a lot of smoothing there once I got to the smudge stage (If you are wondering, I usually touch up my colors with the Smudge tool to help blend the edges between different shades. It's how I roll)

I wish I could have gotten the color of the eye to stand out more, but I'm still pleased with it. I didn't want it to look super predatorial like some of my other lore drake eyes do. And the mask......put more detail into this mask than I tend to do with nameless lore drakes, which was fun. That's one of my favorite parts of drawing them - I get to play with shapes and personality.

Sheesh, for making this fast, I sure had to gab a lot. Oh well! Signing off.

Kite badge

Wooo, got it colored before work! HOO-ah!

Conbadge done for gingerligress over at the badge exchange comm. on livejournal. I had fun with the camo....just wish the colors were a little more distinct on the vest.

Done in a few hours with micron pen, colored pencil, and then slapped on some card stock, yay!