The complete series of illustrations
for
’s novel They Didn’t See It Beneath Them
I made a series of 12 drawings in a collaboration with
I've been playing with Windows paint for as long as i remember but i've only taken it semi-seriously for making art in the last few years, beside my actual painting. I like it for it's crudeness, it works simply but there is a challenge to it.
I had made a few drawings with paint on the weekends while listening live to one of the Steemit related podcasts on Discord, namely Votu and Steemit Talk. One of those drawings was this sharklike creature swimming(or flying, as you like) over a stylized landscape:
Flow, digital drawing, 2017
I posted it up and @Verbal-d commented that he had a potential collaboration in mind, that he would like to discuss on Steemit.chat. He had already written a story and was looking for some illustrations to go with it. I gave it a read and thought it was quite fun with some nice action - perhaps more for younger audience, but quite thrilling still. The story featured prehistoric underwater monsters , which I thought would make for some interesting drawings. Also I really enjoyed the beginning with the fishing as it was one of my favourite things to do when I was kid(beside drawing - i did draw a lot of fish at a time)and I did put some of those memories into the drawings. So, the idea was to use the illustrations along with the story on Steemit and possibly in a book aswell. After some negotiations we came to an agreement and things started rolling.
first sketch for chapter 1
Before each picture I woud read the chapter a few times and we woud then talk over some ideas what would work best. I would then do some research as necessary and produce a rough sketch. After the sketch was approved by verbal-d, I would continue and refine it to a finished drawing. Every now and then I would show the progress to verbal-d and he might come up with something to add and would always push for more details, while I would on occasion preferred a more expressive look. There definitely was some adjusting to the role of illustrator from many years as working as fine artist following only my own vision. In the end i was really happy how the drawings came out. Here they are:
Chapter I
This where it all started, the idyllic fishing scene. I tried to be sensitive to the mood of the text and reflect it in the style of each picture. I wanted to make this very light in contrast to what would come up next.
Chapter II
The first ancient creature makes a quick appearance here. I imagine it would've been quite a horrific and surreal experience and i tried to capture that feeling most of all. A lot of the crazyness comes from the water.
Chapter III
We get to see the shadowy silhouette of the mysterious creature as it's chasing a school of fish. The pattern on mackerel is something that i've always found very intriguing.
Chapter IV
The Dunkleosteus makes a jump going after the boat. These were always exciting when the creature would pop out.. there is definitely a pattern going on here. Also I had good fun with the water on this one. Once again i got to fall back to memories on a boat.
Chapter V
Here we see some detail of the dunkleosteous armor plates and the eye. I spent a good amount of time trying to make that reflection work and i'm quite happy how it turned out.
Chapter VI
The dunkleosteous flees as a new creature is approaching from below. I liked to play a lot with the black and white in lot of the drawings. Trying to work out the trail of the boat was a treat.
Chapter VII
This one was a little of a pickle. For this one i wanted to do the sinking boat, but verbal-d also liked the goblin shark. So we ended up doing this fun split image.
Chapter VIII
There was a lot going on in this picture. I liked the play with the triangles and fin shapes which sort of picks up from the previous image as things are starting to get more hectic here.
Chapter IX
The divers get to have a close look a the Megalodon as its chomps on the poor dunkleosteus. I remember we were very excited to get to this one. Again lot of elements in the picture like the chains and the dissolving blood clouds making the action.
Chapter X
Then it was time to chill with the blue whales and drones. verbal-d wanted some random letters on the side of the drone but i always like to put in little easter eggs.
Chapter XI
_ Megalodon dives after the whales. This seems pretty straightforward drawing but there were some kinks to it with the angle and the mouth._
Chapter XII
This is the end. I did not have a specific reference for the Leviathan due to it's mythic nature. I initially thought it woud only be a big cavernous mouth with teeth, but these things tend to grow. Verbal-d suggested adding a few spikes on sides and below chin and i got carried away. We had to try few types of eyes that would give the right impression.
And that was all of them. Thank you all for reading and thanks again
Here is link to the original story:
They Didn't See It Beneath Them by @verbal-d
I thought i would make a separate post for these but let's just throw them here at the end. throughout the process i made a lot of separate saves and after completing each drawing i would compile them to an animated gif, which was a cool way to show the process. So here is the encore of those aswell:
