Justin Gerard

"Witness to the End" Classic Fantasy Illustration for September 2020

Added 2020-09-14 14:00:05 +0000 UTC

This month I finally wrapped up a Plague of Dragons painting an image that I have been working on sporadically for the past few months. It was a frustrating image because every time I would get started on the image, something would pop up and pull me away from it. This is usually okay, but I think the image suffered a little from me constantly putting down and picking up the brush again and having to ask, 'okaaaay... so what was I doing again?'

Even with the confusing way in which this image was painted, it offered a lot of really interesting challenges that were a lot of fun to work on. In particular the floor, (weird thing to get excited about, I know) and the debris littered around on it was fun to work on, and I am really pleased with how some of the effects there turned out. This excitement over specific parts of the image can be bad because if you are getting excited about things like that, then you may be running the risk of the parts being stronger than the whole of the image. I hope that didn't occur here, but I have been working on it so off and on that I feel like I can't see it without some time away from it. Whatever the case, I really enjoy the crop of the image above.

When in doubt, add machine guns?

Here is the color comp for the image, which we developed live on stream last month:

I hope you enjoyed this one!

Lastly, Next month is October.... And I have been saving an epic Halloween battle scene for an entire year now. I wasn't able to fit it in last year like I wanted, so I have been slowly refining the design ever since. I am really excited to finally be able to get working on it. October is going to be a big month here... :D

-jg