Song of Fire

This was an interior for a short fiction anthology published by Subterranean Press, called "The Book of Magic." I did a lot of black and white pictures for that book during 2018/19, and just a few in color. For this one I leveraged a process I'd been toying around with but hadn't used on any finished work up until then: Toppi-esque topographic linework married with paint. Because in the computer you can paint both under and over your lines (and even with them as clean selections), you can get the linework to carry a lot of the weight (values, informational density, edges, etc.) of the final piece, which makes the "painting time" quite short. I had excellent reference for this one, and the "Stage 1, Stage 2" process images belie what is usually a more non-linear painting process. Still, I hope they're interesting!