Category: Book Interpretations

Murtagh & Thorn Inspired

This isn’t exactly a Thorn concept drawing, but I did recently go through part of the Inheritance Cycle, by Christopher Paolini, involving Murtagh and Thorn.

Also, after looking through several Dore engravings I noticed there’s special care given to each background, and so I spent a little more energy on the clouds…which one of my daughters pointed out as her favorite part of the sketch.

Lethrblaka Concept from Christopher Paolini’s Book, Brisingr

I’m going through Christopher Paolinin’s Inheritance Cycle book series again, and couldn’t resist rendering his nightmarish beast, the Lethrblaka.

As far as the monster concept, I also feel it could be improved dramatically to be even more creepy. I wanted it to have an insect and vulture quality. I do like the “meat hook” appendages designed to snare and tear. I also like the thorny, venom laced spines on its tongue.

Stylistically, I’ve been studying Gustave Doré’s engravings. His masterful art is incredible. I decided to try to mimic engraving digitally and this was sort of my first shot. It has a LONG ways to go to even look like an engraving. Well, this is sort of my second or third shot after playing around with dozens of digital pens and tools. The realization that Doré’s engravings have a tonal quality under the line work was a breakthrough, which I employed here. The problem is that there’s too many stylistic directions going on to look like an engraving, not to mention that the single scribe does not mimic the parallel lines of an engraving tool (which, I’ve used in the upcoming posts).

Compositionally, I’d like to leverage more dramatic perspective in the future. This is sort of plopped in the center without much visual tension. The lighting and contrast turned out ok.