Final project for a Domestika illustration course taught by Deb JJ Lee. We had to portray a scene from a book, preferably one in the public domain. For my inspiration, I chose a scene from the novel I’m writing. Here, the protagonists discover an ancient ruin/monolith while lost in the mountains. It’s the first time I’m illustrating characters from that story, so it’s exciting to see them here.

 

I experimented using gradient maps, and although the results were interesting, I didn’t feel they gave the composition the right feel, and the emphasis didn’t seem to fall on the characters the way I wanted. I’ll need to practice more with that technique, because Deb’s use of gradient maps was beautiful. Maybe it just didn’t work with my composition or I didn’t have enough experience with it. I’d love to try creating other illustrations from that story, so I may have another opportunity to try the gradient map technique.