This was my final project for Beginning Illustration. We'd been required to use watercolor for all our other projects, but for our final project, our teacher allowed us to use whatever medium we chose. Technically, the class was a "traditional media" class--meaning no digital--but I had had a friendly debate with my teacher a few weeks before about the relative merits of digital art vs. traditional art and how closely digital art can approximate traditional effects; when I asked if I could do the final project digitally, he agreed, on the condition that I use it as a challenge to "convince" him that digital art can capture the same "hand-of-the-artist" effects as traditional art. This was the result, and he seemed pleased during the critique, so I guess I rose to the challenge.

The project was open-ended, but because it's an illustration class, we had to do something that would actually be used as a commercial illustration (our project proposal had to include such things as intended audience, intended use, what the illustration was supposed to accomplish, etc.). I decided to do a book cover illustration for a fantasy novel I've had in mind for years but have never gotten around to writing.

Below under Additional Images you'll find detail shots (please oh please take a look), the layout of the book cover with text, and even a picture of the printed book jacket on an actual book.

The model for the subject in the cowl, by the way, was my wonderful husband, Tom.

Date: December 2007
Tools: Corel Painter IX
Dimensions: 6000 x 4050 pixels (20" x 13.5" @ 300 dpi)