I just finished these illustrations for an upcoming issue of America's Civil War Magazine and the art director was kind enough to let me show them right away-- the issue won't be on newsstands until January 2009. The story comes from a Union soldier's diary and was extremely fun to illustrate.
For those of you interested in the process, the finals were executed with acrylic ink and gouache on Strathmore illustration board.
Below are the pencil sketches...
The quick value studies done with markers...
And some of the initial thumbnails (I made them very small here so the text is unreadable-- I don't want to ruin the story)...
And some of the embarrassing reference photos that I shot and gathered with the help of my wife (and my dog). It was really important to me to research everything thoroughly because I wanted the illustration to feel very authentic and believable. What you see here is just a tiny fraction of the research. And believe it or not, these are the least embarrassing of the reference photos...
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