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.

Actually, It turned out that the author was happy with the drawing I submitted first, but I wasn’t. It seemed to stagnant, simple, and uninspired. I submitted this rendering for his consideration. In it I attempted to give the image a bit more visual punch. (you will notice that this was rendered with a computer, I used sketchbook express for most of these preliminary renderings)

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