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The Garden of Madness

- 'a place of nightmare...'

More pictures from Armada Books' Skyfall series of 'advanced fantasy' gamebooks, this time 'The Garden of Madness' again written by David Tant. I wasn't able to illustrate the third in the series due to other commitments, but was very pleased to be asked to work with David again on this - the fourth and last Skyfall book.

The style I tried to achieve with these drawings (as well as many of my other B/W fantasy drawings) is to suggest the tonal values of an old woodcut without actually slavishly copying a wood-cut's style. This gives the drawings a slightly archaic feel which I think suits the fantasy genre. Again the full set of illustrations for this book numbered around forty. Much as I enjoyed the work and was grateful for the (small!) income, it was always a bit of a relief when I'd finished the last picture and could massage the cramp out of my drawing hand! The original pages were done in pen & ink at A4 size and reduced by 50% for publication.

Click on the links and / or thumbnails below to view the picture in more detail.