Ghost Town | Illustration, Design

The client didn’t have any clear direction that he wanted me to follow but asked to see two or three concepts before I moved on to the final illustration. Originally, I was asked to do a cover for “The Pacific Review” (hence the titles on these comps). Eventually, “Ghost Town” was added to the request and he chose two of my three comps with no revisions.

This illustration became incredibly personal to me the more I worked on it. An entire world was conceptualized out of this one digital painting, which the tattoo is a major part of. One day I’ll get to that story.

This was a comp I rejected without showing it to the client. I was very interested in exploring the idea of setting some kind of expectation with the front cover (the man with the cigarette) then giving the viewer something unexpected on the back cover (some kind of special cube — tofu maybe — and evil scientists in the background). I was also having a lot of fun with the lighting. Reminds me of Caravaggio. Ultimately, I felt it had too much context and not enough subtext for this type of publication.