"The Mysteries of Moonsea"
Wizards of the Coast

10"x32" Pencil and Digital
© 2005

"One of the more challenging compositions that I have been faced with, this image needed to have many different elements that all worked in a unified design. Reviewing several other images executed by other artists for book covers in this series, I wanted to do something different than the standard point of view, right to left design. Knowing that the spine of the book would divide the composition in half, I essentially needed to make two paintings that could be viewed as one image. Strong diagonals from each corner meet along this line.
This painting was the first book cover I executed digitally. I had only begun experimenting with digital painting for about a month when I was faced with this traditional painting that was going to be over four feet long in order to accomodate the requisite detail, I chose instead to work digitally. I'm very glad I did. Digital allowed me to drop-in a perspective grid that I could work on top of and then discard. "