Recently I had the pleasure to work on one of the legendary ghost stories writer Lafcadio Hearn. He wrote Japanese legends and ghost stories and he is great! 🙂 Here’s my cover for Russian edition of his stories.
[singlepic id=108 w=320 h=240 float=]All my links below will send you to whole books with big images. Don’t miss the bus! 😉
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In this cover I used several sources to find proper reference. The first one is the book Samurai Commanders in two parts (the first one is about 940 – 1576 and the second 1577 – 1638) from Osprey Publishing. I love Osprey’s books. You can see there a lot of beautiful colour plates, which has been made by awesome Angus McBride, Richard Hook or Wayne Reynolds. Here are just a few samples:
All Japanese warriors have very interesting and colored armors and suits. In my case I can’t use so many colored details or very uncommon things such as a helm with very long horns. I had to simplify all those details and decoration, therefrom I had to add some decoration on the kimono of the main character. I had to balance these features. So, we came to the second part of my sources of references. 🙂
The second source is about ornament. As you can see I drew an ornament on a kimono of the main character. For this very very simple ornament I used my favorite book Ornament of All Ages and Styles. This book actually on Russian, but I have the source book of my Russian edition, it’s the L’ornement polychrome released in Paris in 1888 under the editorship of Auguste Racinet and this is the real treasure! A few samples:
Remember, those plates has a public access and if you choose one of these peaces, I suggest you to change it somehow: the colour or shape, something! You shouldn’t let these details such as ornament to coincide with details in a work of other artist.
As additional I want to share some of my interior illustrations which you can see in latest Paizo issues.
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