I had a quieter day than normal today, so I managed to find 3 hours to start working on the Porter’s Hollow book cover art. I usually spend about 20 to 30 hours on a painting, but I’m pressing to see if I can work a little faster this time around. I think the subject matter may be a bit simpler on this one than others I have done, but on the other hand, I tend to work in a lot of layers to get the details I want, and that always takes time (regardless of what I’m painting).

It’s not much to look at yet, but I did get the background blocked-in and started on some of the details in one of the trees. I definitely want to work from back-to-front on this piece because it will be very high contrast between the background and the foreground. I will be going for a lot more detail than what I had shown in the exploratory sketch I made, because the goal is to make it feel like an old, semi-creepy cabin. I’m hoping to add some broken boards, destroy the chimney and maybe add a few broken panes of glass, but I don’t want to go too far with the damage either. I think this painting is going to need a delicate balance because it has the potential to become too ‘story-book-like.’ It needs to be more ‘adult-creepy’ and not too ‘juvenile-creepy’, so I need to execute it with as much detail as possible, and with a certain level of care.

Anyhow, here’s the current progress. It doesn’t look like much yet (I blocked-in the background and added a few details to one of the trees), but I think it will be a good base layer for what is to come…