Behind The Scenes: King of Souls

This was one of three ideas I presented to Brian and Paul. This one really captures the rust and grittiness of the setting of the story. It was the unanimous favorite.

I started by sketching out the design on canvas with pencil.

I painted the appliances and light bulb with acrylics. This step was just to get the shapes in place -- I'll add the lighting and rust later.

I scanned in the painting and did some rough lighting effects in Photoshop.

The next step was to add rust. I drew this swatch of rust and a rust spot using chalk pastel.

This is the scanned painting with the rust added to each appliance.

Next, I needed to add the author's name, which should look spray-painted on. The first spray paint swatch I created was way too drippy. I also realized that the words are supposed to be at an angle, so the drips shouldn't be going straight down. Time to try again!

This second try was much better. Just a few drips, and they were going at an angle.

I added the spray paint area to the picture.

Then, I erased out the parts that would be stencils if this were real grafitti.

I needed to add one final lighting effect to make the light bulb really look bright. I created this image with chalk pastel on paper.

I layered the lighting area I created on top of the painting and brightened the light bulb itself. This created the final image.