The last of the story spreads! Any more time I spend on this project will be devoted solely to tightening up the artwork. But how tight do I really want it?
Spread 13 is the transformation spread. Something magical happens here. A man turns into a lizard (grovelling the floor in sorrow & repentance.) Honestly, I don’t get it! But I’m gonna MAKE you believe it’s possible!
The spread shows the sequential step-by-step morphing of our character into a lizard. When I was making the color studies, I realized that this transformation from man to lizard would be helped if I added a “tail” to the character’s initial design. Initially, the hunchback didn’t have a sash across his waist. But I added that later because it would specifically aid the visuals for the transformation.
I introduced a lot of green color into this spread and in a more graphic way. It’s a warm and welcome release from the previous spread. I think after a while of looking at all that blue in spread 12, the greens on this page will APPEAR to have a lot more orange in them. Of course it’ll also depend on the printing. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun noodling with this spread.
Spread 14 closes the story in a unique way. The illustration is in the center, separated vertically by the page gutter.
The quality of modelling for the hunchback’s face surprised me. It turned out really well. That’s how tight I want my paintings to be. I want to resonate that quality across the book, but with deadlines approaching, I will only have time to focus on the cover and maybe a few others. Achieving such quality requires smaller brushes, sharper accents (dark & light), a lot of panning around the artwork, and an eye for where the detailing should be done.
Many artists feel the need to keep on developing and detailing a particular artwork. Each artist has a different threshold as to when he or she can say of their work, “It is done.”
