The Shadow Over Innsmouth: part two of eight

My traipse through sunny Innsmouth continues with the next two images and an updated version of the beach scene from the last post.

Thanks for all the comments, they were super helpful. I've decided to keep these black and white for the time being, considering I'm doing sixteen of them before the semester ends. I may work with the color in them after the fact. The cover I will be doing will be in color, though. I assume that'll be in the last batch of images I do.

Here's the updated beach scene:


I darkened the town and added white watercolor paint to bring out the windows and the highlights in the ocean. I think it's good for me to "finish" each image, let it stew for a few days, and then go back into it with fresh eyes. That's what happened with this one.

This next one is actually the second image I made for the project, in which our narrator realizes that his hotel room is exactly as insecure as he feared it might be.


This next image is from earlier in the story when the narrator uses whiskey to coax the story of Innsmouth's haunted past from its oldest citizen, the untainted Zadok Allan. Doing character-based work with pwdered graphite is a whole different challenge compared to doing the atmospheric scenery stuff, but it's loads of fun.



As always, powdered graphite and watercolor on 6x9" Arches hotpress watercolor paper. 140 lbs, I think.

Also as always, comments are hugely appreciated, especially because I'm juggling multiple pieces at once that don't have individual deadlines. If you've got suggestions, have at them! I've got some time to do edits and I want these to be as good as they can be.

Live large, blog readers. Live large.