I muddled around with the clouds on this Ace of Wands piece for what seemed like forever. Finally, decided to stop fighting the line work and make the clouds Art Nouveau style as well, instead of trying for realistic. It just wasn’t working. Plus, creating naturalistic anything in Illustrator is difficult as well as creating some colossal huge files. My poor iMAC just can’t handle it. Getting the base colors in on the MCs now. May need to add more detail to the shore line, water and beach, but will work on that after the characters and the foreground is done so it doesn’t fight for attention. Looks like I won’t be entering the Rising Stars competition this time around. I need 5 strong fantasy pieces and even if I can finish this Ace of Wands by the 14th, I only have 4 I feel are of high enough level to enter.

This is a companion piece to the image I did for IMC 2012. Ace or Swords.