I've recently wrapped up work on a commissioned painting for a client in Maryland, who plans on presenting it to his wife for Christmas. You might recognize the source material; suffice to say that it was tremendously fun to work on. Perhaps more importantly, it finally got me painting again.
As with all of my projects, I started off the painting with a round of concept drawings, which were sent to the client for approval.
The initial concept sketch, drawn freehand from a reference.
Concepts for a more illustrated approach to the borders, which we ended up deciding against because it might have looked too busy. Probably a good choice, even though I thought some of these looked pretty cool.
Symbol practice, with a few locations on the side.
Major location concepts. Pretty much all of these made it into the final, albeit with abbreviated detail.
Minor locations, which ended up being so boring that I quickly ended up doodling.
Naturally, after the concept stage I dove right into the painting. Here are a few of the progress shots.
The entire map, roughed out in pencil. I used a grid to ensure as much accuracy as possible.
Base colors and shading applied to each of the landmasses.
Water and sparing detail on the Earth Kingdom landmass.
More land features, base colors around the border, and a little bit of detail work in the corner.
Near-finished border and landmasses, and a second base coat over the water.
Just thought it's cool how it catches the light in the dark.
First wave layer.
Second wave layer.
Light and dark glazes over the ocean.
The final product.
