Justine Jones

Halls of the Blood King behind the scenes sketches and linework part 1

Added 2021-12-13 20:43:15 +0000 UTC

Hi everyone! I'm going to be revealing the sticker of the month soon, but for this Blood King themed month, i thought i'd do a little post about my process for working on the illustrations for Halls of the Blood King!

This was the most amount of color work i have ever had to do in such a short period of time, so i had to do a heavy combination of digital and traditional. Usually i prefer to do most of my linework traditionally, but when things get crazy/ i have to do a lot of things fast, i will finish a lot of it in photoshop. Especially if it's a colored piece, since all my coloring is also done in photoshop.

The cover (like everything else) had to be done very quickly, but i knew i wanted a heavily detailed demon gate in the foreground. Because i didn't have time to draw a ton of tiny lines, I drew half of the image and mirrored it in photoshop, and then made changes from there. Kind of crazy to look at this little sketch and see what it turned into.

The original linework for the shadowhounds. This was super fun to draw, and obviously a little bit alien inspired. When i was a kid i thought that the drawings in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books of animals with human hands and feet, were the freakiest thing ever, so i love to give human limbs to my own animal drawings.

For the Blood Spider Queen i just drew what came to me. I don't think there was any description at all, except for red armor, and her being very large. I asked Diogo if he had any specifics and he said he wanted me to just do what felt best, because it would turn out better that way. I really appreciate being given so much freedom in these designs. I remember playing with the idea that her face might just be a mask that she's holding up (sort of like Hexadecimal on the Reboot cartoon lol), but in the end i didn't make it obvious. But in my mind her real face/ faces are on the lower half

Here's the original sketch for the Lenice, as well as a sketch for an unused piece that wouldn't fit. It was a depiction of the shelves in the library. They're supposed to be made of hardened blood.