Here’s a piece I was doing for Emerald City Comicon’s Monsters and Dames 2012 art book. This year was the first year they did an open submission for it. I was excited and wanted to do something elaborate for it. Unfortunately, the piece was not selected to be used in the book. BUT, I actually wasn’t able to finish the graytoning until after the deadline. So maybe that’s why I didn’t get it? Sure, I’m gonna go with that. 😛

After graytoning, I decided that I wanted to color it up in Photoshop using a very simple color palette and try to evoke more emotion and atmosphere. For this experiment, I decided to keep everything predominantly blue — like the soldier and monster were engaged in a game of “cat & mouse” in the moonlight. I created my lighting scheme in the graytone version so that I could just colorized the drawing and just accentuate what was already established. I tried to bring forward the bright spots with highlights, and recede the dark spots with darker values. I also attempted to create separation between the soldier & the stone column in the foreground from the monster in the background. To help separate the elements more, I used a purple rimlight.

And in case you were wondering, the soldier is not scared. Look at her face. She’s not hiding from the monster. She’s not on the run. She’s ready for a fight. In fact, she’s looking for a fight. She’s on the offensive. She’s hunting it.

If you want to see how I turned this piece into a mock poster, click on this link to check it out.

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[11″x14″] Col-erase Pencil -> Micron Pens -> Copic Markers