Thursday, May 15, 2008

Donato Giancola and The Last Paladin

Donato Giancola recently finished this painting for Kathleen Bryan's The Last Paladin.

Occasionally I will get a number of great sketches for one project. In this case, Donato had created a couple of sketches for the first book in the series, The Serpent and the Rose, and I hated the idea of picking just one of them. Luckily the editor, Beth Meacham, said that one would be perfect for Serpent while the other could be kept for this concluding volume. It was nice entering into a sales season knowing that we had an approved sketch a year and half before we needed the painting.

IMAGES:

Final Painting.

Initial thumbnails. The top right became The Last Paladin while the bottom thumb was used for The Serpent and the Rose.

Flushing out the thumbnail.

Final Drawing.

9 comments:

Eric Braddock said...

damn. absolutely amazing. always love seeing Donato's new work, thanks for posting!

Francis Vallejo said...

whoa, wow! that's special!!

ces said...

I know he's a good artist, but I just can't get excited over his work.

Sorry.

Anonymous said...

stunning. 'nuff said. well, maybe not- how big is it, and will we be able to oggle it at IlluXCon???

Anonymous said...

My brain is exploding. . .

Kristina Carroll said...

Love this piece. Of course watching him paint it was a blast. The detail on the shields is glorious. Fun to see what I would like like with blonde hair too.

Anonymous said...

I knew I recognized that central character!

Russell Dickerson said...

I love seeing the work in progress, it's nice to see the similarities and differences in how other artists do their work.

Irene Gallo said...

Ces: That happens. There are any number of artists and writers (not to mentions movies, plays, etc.) that I know are god, everyone who's opinion I trust says are good, and for whatever reason I just seem to be missing the gene to appreciate.

Sam - Your head is not allowed to explode. We haven't used you up yet.