#gunpowder fantasy

@drumsofatelaer is my original queer historical fantasy IP I’m developing with @ocarina-of-what and this is a 2 page spread illustration for Episode 2 in the novel. This is a rework of the original illustration which I finished in 2018. I’m sharing this because I think its important for artists to feel like they can critique and improve upon their own work in a healthy way.

I’ve learned so much in the last 3 years and it was time to give this piece a much needed facelift. I was able to do this by salvaging most of the original PSD (which… was a hot nightmare mess haha) and re-organizing layers. It did save me some time with foreground elements separated from each other and the background. I then proceeded to put another 14 hours into the repaint, which involved cleaning up all silhouette edges, redoing the ambient occlusion and key light layers, and repainting the background tree line and fort completely. The end result, I think, fits much better with the rest of Drums of Atelaer’s body of work!

Included is the original from 2018, and an explain of all the changes I made to improve the painting. The new PSD is up on patreon for $5+ folks!

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