Forest Exit

This is an older drawing many of you have probably seen. It was used for the cover of The Hour of The Shipwreck Album, The Hour is Upon Us, but it comes from the same world of The Sleeping Forest so I thought I would post it. At one point I had a concept to turn the album into a series of short films where the visuals are set to music, much like Fantasia. This picture came from one of those ideas for The Chandelier Suite where the character is exiting a forest and entering an area of floating trees.

Inside Lyla's Tree-Home

Lyla's Tree Home

For well over a year I have been writing the story for the next phase of Shipwreck: Music, Story, Visuals. When I hit a wall with writing or composing/orchestrating, or when I am inspired to draw, I draw images I imagine from the story. It has been inspired at least as much by visuals as it has by music, story, character, so it only makes sense to be creating that visual world as I go along.

This is the front of Lyla and Uncle Ivan's tree-home in The Sleeping Forest deep within The Land of Gorlen. It is a pencil drawing on paper. I adjusted the contrast and exposure in iPhoto.

It takes me a long time to finish a drawing, in part because I spend most of my time on the story and the music, and in part because I really don't have much drawing facility so it takes me a long time to get onto paper what I see in my head, and a lot of trial and error. I have one other drawing that I just completed today so I will post that soon, but after that hopefully I will have more drawings without too much delay, but only time will tell...

-Richie