Nostria and Andergast Cover Illustration
I love painting book covers. This one was done for The Dark Eye's Nostria and Andergast (Copyright by Ulisses Spiele).
The male knight is from Andergast, the female soldier from Nostria.
I included some process pictures that helps you understand how the work was created. Basically like almost all of my illustrations it started with very quick and ugly sketches ;)
Final Artwork
First thumbnails to get my head around the scenery. Very rough, not beautiful at all.
Second step: work on the two most promising thumbnails and find out what works for the background, mood and lighting. Refine the gestures.
Somewhere inbetween I study light, materials or specific things like: how do feet behave while their human being is balancing on a trunk? I do those sketches and studies also to warm up ahead of jumping into the painting process.
Designing the characters armory and clothing on top of the sketch. Then fill in in the colors, and in a third step apply the light scenary on them.
Characters looking to generic for my inner critic? Refining the designs, iterating them until I am satisfied (in this case I was already happy with it in my second attempt).
After having fun with brushes and colors (call it painting), I end up with my final illustration and call it done. Next one please!