Project Description
This is a concept piece from an unfinished graphic novel project, currently affectionately referred to as Wilhelm, that came into my brain in the early 2000s. I had started drawing it out with pen and ink, but I couldn’t quite get it to look the way I wanted at the time, my vision of it wasn’t as clear. I always intended to return to it, and I finally did. This was another adventure in improving my work flow and learning more skills. I made quite a few custom brushes to add textures (the wrinkly skin texture on the tentacles is actually created with some brushes I made from photos of my knees…guess I need to moisturize occasionally), which I would use more or less like a stamp. I’d then transform the “stamp” and warp it to fit the given shape. After I had built many layers up across an object, I’d paint on top of the texture, using it as a road map of sorts to inform my brush strokes. It’s a tedious process, but a powerful one when used well. I tend to go overboard on details at times, overusing the zoom function of Photoshop. I plan on posting some close ups of this image in particular, because there’s so much in there that can’t be seen.
UPDATE: As I was going through some old sketch books, I stumbled across some of the sketches I did for my first time around at this piece.
The site definitely loads more quickly now and seems easier to navigate for some reason. Very cool illustration of Ohrim vs the Cave Squid!!
Good! Lee had shown me something that mentioned if an image doesn’t load within x number of seconds, most people have already moved on.