Thurus (2004)
The best for almost last
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Though I sketched the Blue Moon game illustrations out all at once, I tackled the paintings one at a time. As these were all printing the same size in the same frame, my sizing of each mostly depended on how much I liked the particular sketch, since certainly over the course of the 9 illustrations, some would be more favored. I’d have liked them all to have been larger, and larger still: some of these were good candidates for bumping up to 11x17”, but the time and budget didn’t allow me that luxury. The largest therefore were the custom size of 14x8”.
Thurus was my favorite of the bunch, and I wonder now if I left it for last specifically to keep me motivated. In fact, 5 of the last 6 paintings were these larger ones, meaning I did 3 smaller ones first, probably because I knew I’d run out of steam later, so best to do the most exciting ones last.
There was actually one more illustration for this project left to do, but that’s its own interesting story.
In this era, I was beginning to experiment with painting on colored Canson Mi-Tientes paper. I had used it when I was young for Prismacolor pencils, and liked the smooth surface. They were advertised as acid-free and with permanent colors, so I spent a few years using the color of the paper as a toned underpainting. In this case, I used the opportunity play with letting the gray of the paper show through.
Some or all of these cards were reprinted in a release of the game by Fantasy Flight, in 2014. I don’t have any images of the final in either edition to show you.