The second Illustration proved considerably more interesting to draw. in the words of the author: “This is a man wearing a white mask. He has bright yellow robes, and on his back are two wings that hang off his shoulders that are red. The color doesnt matter seeing as how the book will only be black and white. I want him to be creepy and nasty”  This request left a lot more to my imagination, and the drawing was a lot more fun to make. Here is the first concept for the masked man that I sent to the author.

This was my least favorite illustration in the book, but the author was elated, so I eventually settled on a version I could live with. Here is the version of the ambulance that appeared in The Traveler’s Advance.

The author loved my previous submission, so I went about the final version. Here is the ambulance that I drew, just pen and ink, before photoshop.

After the submission of the last image, the author said that he wanted the focus of the image to be just as much on the ambulance as it was on the bag and stretcher, and he also wanted the rod of asclepius to be visible somewhere on the ambulance, so I was back where I started. I needed to keep the dynamic image, while giving three in-animate objects equal airtime. This proved near impossible in the end, because the author also requested that the ambulance be in a barren alleyway. Here is my third concept.

The first illustration was— in the words of the author, “the back of an ambulance with the doors open and all the ambulance things inside. A stretcher is next to the ambulance, and there is an medical bag on top of it/next to it”. This one, as you can probably tell, was relatively straightforward in concept, but was surprisingly difficult to make, as I wanted it to be dynamic and interesting, and that was a tad difficult to do with pen and ink and the size restraints. Here is the drawing that I presented to the author first, as a conceptual proposal.

I recently illustrated a book, (The Traveler’s Advance) and will, over the next few weeks, be  posting The creative process that led to each of the final illustrations in the book. Hope you all find this interesting and informative.

—Chris