Gregory's ServerSo I felt it was essential to portray one of the massive storms described in the book. I could only do that using a horizontal format with a panoramic view. 2/9
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After transferring the landscape masses to the panel, I “painted” in the cloud shapes using pastels which I then fixed by spraying down with clear acrylic gesso. 4/9 The panel is cradled in a bed of foam board, which has registration marks so I can accurately fix my drawings on tracing paper if I need to check on the painting’s fidelity to the original composition. 5/9 Usually I work from background to foreground and from shadows to light, but in this case I needed the foremost figure to guide my handling of the elements of sky framing the figure. Also, from fairly early on I had the glow of the veiled sun to guide my color and values in that part of the sky. 6/9 By this time the sky is pretty well laid in and I’ve started to render the shadows of the landscape masses. As often happens, I decided I had incorrectly visualized the shadows and structure of some of the landscape shapes so I had to fix those as I painted them in. 7/9 I often do a study or two of the main characters which then become my “models” while I am doing the actual painting. The study on the left is a painted sketch of the figures and some tentative plant forms. 8/9 Cover illustration for THE WAY OF KINGS by Brandon Sanderson (TOR) 9/9 Be sure to check out the full story of the making of THE WAY OF KINGS on the website, featuring alternate concepts for the cover: https://www.michaelwhelan.com/shaping-roshar-making-of-the-way-of-kings/  |
The first thing I did was draw out some of the larger landscape shapes and work out the placement of the various elements. 3/9