Switchblade Goddess

-By Dan dos Santos



Here's a new cover of mine that just went public. Aside from the glint on the switchblade and a few color adjustments, it's all oil paint. The original measures roughly 20x30 inches on illustration board.

This was a really fun job (for obvious reasons), but was also one of those assignments that took far longer than expected. In fact, I'm still feeling the repercussions of having gone well over my deadline. Unfortunately, I had to cut things short, so there are still quite a few areas I am unhappy with. I expect I will revisit the piece soon to fix some of those errors.



I was uncertain of some of the lighting I had in my sketch, so I decided to make a quick maquette of the dragon skull to aid me.

Here's a few progress pics of the acrylic lay-in, and a quick scrub of oils over said lay-in. The lay-in was more detailed than usual, but it's texture really showed through the oils and did a lot of the work for me.

And lastly, the final image with type treatment.