This illustration was created for the literary zine, Far Off Places. The issue is titled Between the Leaves, and I illustrated A Trillion Places Too Small, a short story by Anniken Blomberg. Here’s a little snippet of the story to give you a bit of context for my illustration:

It’s getting darker and people start to leave work. They carry on as normal. They pass between the wolf-like shadows, step into bus shelters, hurry across the street. Oblivious to the brief flashes of amber outside the white ring of the streetlights.  They’ll take their usual route back to their houses and flats, open the door and do whatever they usually do in the evenings. Unaware how much they really love their small, predictable lives.

Here’s a close up of one of the sad little guys, showing some of the textures and details in the piece. This piece was similar to my Seven Dwarfs piece in that they were both set at night, which is a challenge! I tend to work with lots of white space in my work, so creating a scene at night is very different. But what’s the point in creating without a challenge?

Above is the scanned-in image of the pencil texture I created for the wolf shadow.

And here’s a spread from my sketchbook while I was working on this project. I also made a little gif of the digital-side of the process behind this piece! If you’ve read my blog before, you know I obsessively track my process, so why not make a gif of it!