Tornin arrives

In a blur of motion, Tornin stands before Lorace, placing himself between the remaining wolves and their intended prey.

I spent more time on this than I should have, but it's Tornin.

The Final Warden is now available on Nook!

The 90 days of the Kindle exclusive are at an end for The Final Warden. With several friends and at least one eager reader waiting for a Nook version, I am happy to announce the Nook version.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-final-warden-thomas-cardin/1115213376?ean=2940016755540&itm=1&usri=2940016755540

I do not have a Nook myself, so I had to rely on the on-line reader to see that everything formatted correctly. Nook users please let me know how it looks, and enjoy the read.

A spirit restored

This is a portion of Lorace's dream. As a child, he chases a golden butterfly through a field of moon-like flowers. Before he can catch the butterfly, it bursts into a shower of golden sparks.

This went together very fast, less than an hour start to finish - mostly due to my getting the hand "just right" with just a few strokes of color, a feat which I must try to duplicate in the future (hand - feat? no pun intended). Also the background being diffuse and dreamlike helped make things quick. 75% of the time was spent drawing sparks.

Giving chase

He did not need to look to know the wolves were in pursuit.

I am not going ape about my anatomy on this one, but I kept to my maxim of drawing fast for these images. There's a difference in how someone runs for their life rather than just running a sprint, capturing that is hard - I tried to show it by throwing his body fairly off of its centerline. I will undoubtedly revisit him and work things over again.

A Wolf Howl

Lorace hears a wolf howl from the depths of the forest, and in his mind's eye he sees three wolves lifting their noses to his scent.

No shortage of wolf reference images to draw from, but I also wanted to create an image that showed the depths of the Keth Forest and the atmosphere beneath the fall canopy.

Halversome finished

It is late afternoon when Lorace crests the headland and beholds Halversome.

A start on Halversome

Ahh Halversome. I have just a beginning here. It is a bigger and more complex painting than the previous ones...what I have here is about and hour and a half into it. I sketched a few thumbnails to get the basics ironed out in my head of how I wanted to show the surrounding landscape. I spent a majority of the time so far on the forest and have a lot more to do to adjust depth and scale.

Halversome itself is just a sketch in the middle and there are a few farms shown on the hill beyond.