Curse Of The Dreaming God

"Curse of the Dreaming God" (2013)
Client portrait in fictional adventure scene
[Acrylics & Colored Pencils on MDF board]
Client: Private Commission

This has been an extremely entertaining and enjoyable commission!
A friend from the Indiana Jones message board asked me to portray him for a comic book cover. This cover was to be a companion piece to a photo diary of his travels that he is putting together. I liked the idea but convinced him that I'd prefer to go down the Pulp route instead of drawing him in ink and coloring him in classic golden age comic fashion.
Quickly we discovered that we both love Doc Savage, The Shadow, the writings of H.R. Haggard and E.R. Burroughs and, of course, H.P. Lovecraft! One of my favorite Pulp paintings is Walter Baumhofer's first Doc Savage cover, to which this painting has become quite the homage. My client is mostly responsible for that certain Lovecraftian touch while I added the creepy crawlies and the skull on a stick.
I painted this over a longer period than planned due to other more urgent commitments, but the longer I worked on it the more details I added. At the time I finished the painting I felt that this had been the most satisfying project I had worked on in a long time, and so does my client. I'm glad that the original painting now graces a wall in the home of this very fine gentleman - letting go of it was not as easy as it is with other paintings I've done.

The layout drawing: [link]
The pencil drawing, the foundation for the final painting: [link]
The painting one step at a time: [link]
The final fictional Pulp magazine cover, our very own "Adventure Tales # 3": [link]