The Count of Monte Cristo

So I'm meant to be doing this Illustration from the book "The Count of Monte Cristo" for my - Surprise, surprise Illustration Course - in uni. And I had made up my mind to do this A3 Illustration based on the moment in the book when Edmond Dantés finds the buried treasure in a cave on the Island of Monte Cristo. Before starting this illustration how ever, I had decided to do a QUICK A4 sized illustration of an earlier part of the book when Dantés and Abbé an old man who'd been imprisoned on an island prison eleven years earlier, are digging their way to freedom. The only problem is my quick drawing turned into a proper photoshop painting.

 So here's the outline drawing, I've tried to use thirds in my composition, and I feel this has had a good impact on the image. And so the greyscale part began.

I like to do the greyscale figures on a different layer, one because it makes work a lot easier, but also because if anything goes wrong with the greyscale I only have one layer to worry about. My recent learnt about understanding tone in one of my other uni course and came in very useful for this part of the painting to create distance, as well as the similarities and differences in tone between the figures and the background, or the skin and the clothes.


At this point the tunnel seems to be a little too bright for being underground, as well as only being lit by two small candles. But once colour has started to be applied this becomes a different story. In this small copy of the image, you can't really make out the faint texture of the soil areas, and as a background to the tunnel, one of these layers is set to Luminosity, opacity 7%, and the other Multiply, opacity 6%. These layers aren't not meant to be seen clearly. They are simply meant to be an added layer off depth and interest to the image.

Next as a normal layer, with 100% opacity for the brush and the layer, I coloured each section in as a block colour, then changed the colour brightness of each layer to 50%. Once everywhere is covered in a colour the layers are changed from normal, to Overlay.

And now the rendering begins. I started with a dark brown layer on Overlay to darken the tunnel and give it the brown glow. (The Opacity of this layer is 88%). Under this layer is a normal layer set to 100% opacity which creates the mid-tones for the candle light which is reflecting on the tunnel walls. This is done using a series of pale browns.



                                                    My next job was to add mud and dirt, to the skin, hair, clothes and even the rocks of the prison floor.

Now we start adding some of the highlights, to the pile of dirt at the top of the tunnel where the sunlight is going to shine down and hit it,

Even the little pieces of dirt falling from the tunnel roof get some detail.

And the glow from the candles is added to the figures ready for the candles light to be added.
 Finally god rays are added, candle light is finished off, and small specks of dust are added into the God-rays.

And there we have it a QUICK illustration done on photoshop. Now just to do the proper illustration!