26 Friday Jun 2015
Posted in Fantasy art, Illustration.
…and getting all the key element’s in place turned out to be a lot of fun.
Harvey Click always manages to overheat my brain cells in the best possible way!
I’m even thinking it might be cool to make a complete set of Tarot cards… If only I had the time.
14 Sunday Jun 2015
Posted in golden ratio
Tags
A Gathering of Dwarfs, Ben Hammott, book cover, Dwarf, Fantasy, Fantasy Art, Fantasy illustration, golden ratio, Keith Draws, typography
Here is the solution and below is a description of how I came to it:
A Gathering Of Dwarfs cover art © Keith Draws
When I read Ben Hammott’s “Dead Dragon’s Gold Book 1, A Gathering of Dwarfs” I realized I was going to have to take a slightly different approach. The Book begins where the tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs left off. The Dwarfs have separated to find their way in the world but other forces are at work to bring them back together; to take on an epic quest.
In this Book we get a deep insight into their individual character and the powers at their disposal, as well as some hints of the powers that have begun to pull their strings; and this was what I decided to show by taking a similar approach to that of the great ‘Drew Struzan’ when he produces movie posters – such as those he created for Blade runner and Star Wars.
I decided to paint a scene from each of the Dwarf’s stories and tie them all together using images representing the forces that manipulate them in the story (sorry this sounds vague but I don’t want to give spoilers). If you want to know more the book is right here.
For the composition I opted for sacred geometry. Each illustration was designed using Golden Ratio’s and the final composition was laid out using the same method, which though it looks complex actually simplified things for me since I had very specific areas where I could place the images and, because they were designed using sacred geometry, balance was much easier to achieve, and when positioning the images all I really had to consider was the color balance (The object being to draw the eye into the focus and then lead it on into the details,) since the positions and sizes were dictated by the grid.
Here is the image with some of the geometry laid over it (I’ve simplified it somewhat to make it clearer, but hopefully you’ll get the idea).
I feel it turned out well and Ben is very happy so overall it was a good result.
