The Fox's Tower and Other Tales (Cover Art)

Hello friends!

I have some exciting news!
A few months ago, the lovely Yoon Ha Lee hired me to do the cover artwork for her eBook fairytale collection "The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales"  which has been released today!

It can be found at the following places:
– Amazon.com
– Barnes & Noble
– Google Play
– Kobo
– Smashwords

A peek at the contents can be found at the Barnes & Noble page.

The cover before text was added.

Close up of the tower

Close up of the fox

And a close up of some branches

This illustration is a media hybrid. It was mostly painted with waterproof coloured inks, watercolour, and gouache. However, the sky, wind, and a few other things were completed digitally.

Here's a fun gif of the process!

Cheers!

Wanderers of the North

Hello again!

Today I'm excited to share with you a mini series of black and white animals I've been working on. The inspiration for this series comes partly my love for illustrating various creatures in a naturalistic style, partly the positive response I've received when I posted the fox image, and partly the new story/book, based on Norwegian lore, which a new team of conspirators and I are developing. So far I have five images completed and I hope to add many more to the collection!

Brown Bear

Red Fox

Inspired by the Icelandic horse, but incorporated a more whimsical mane.

Gyrfalcon

Eurasian Lynxes

All pieces are roughly 4 x 6" in size and completed with ink wash, graphite and white gouache.

Yours truly, with some framed prints.

The image at the top, of all the pieces together isn't a photo, by the way. It's a quick simulation I put together in Photoshop, because the photos I took of the "real" works hanging on the wall all had reflections of people in the glass.

Cheers everyone!

Fancy a Fox?

Hello,

So, today I'm just going to be sharing a quick fox portrait I did over the weekend. Though rendering characters and scenes photo-realistically isn't usually part of my illustration style, I do think it's important to practice painting and drawing in a naturalistic fashion. I find that it helps me to better memorize the physical traits of different animals, plants, etc, which later translate much easier to more stylized works and spontaneous sketches.

I usually just like to work with ink washes for my animal portrait, but this time I played around with layering graphite pencil with ink washes back and forth to get the tones and textures I wanted.

Inari the Fox

I've named her Inari, after the Japanese fox spirit. She's a red fox.

Now, here are some process images:

Some ink washes and graphite texturing on the face.

Pretty much the finished version with a white background.
(Eye highlights are done with white gouache)

Played around in Photoshop to see how a sepia might look

Added the background with some more washes of ink and graphite shading and smudging. Also used white gouache to add some highlights to the fur. And some more playing around with sepia toning in Photoshop, of course.

My preferred version

 Prints available here on Society6

Original size: 4.5 x 6"
Paper: Strathmore 400 Series Mixed Media
Tools: Pelikan Black ink (17), Staedler graphite pencils, and Desinger Gouache - Permanent White (008)

Wishing everyone a great week, as always! =)

All images are  ©Mariya Olshevska