-By Dan dos Santos

This piece is actually a little but older, but I never got to share it here. This painting is for the cover of ‘Fire Touched‘, the ninth book in the Mercy Thompson series.

The author and I both knew what scene would work best for the cover, so it was really just a matter of playing with some different compositions. Below you can see an alternate sketch where the hellhound is less prominent, and Mercy’s pose a little more victorious.

I used my typical approach for this cover, begining with a highly detailed underdrawing. Because I paint so thinly, this under drawing does most of the rendering work for me when I’m painting. I often used colored pencil for areas where I do not want the dark pencil lines to show through the paint quite as much.

Once completed, I color corrected the oil painting and made a few digital tweaks and revisions using Photoshop. Below is the final art as it appears in print.

For those that are interested, as of today, I now offer this image for sale as a 18×24 poster, printed on heavyweight stock.

You can buy this poster, and see the other images available HERE.