Morels: Chanterelles

Before I start breaking down the illustration process for the Chanterelles card (above), I should point out that Morels game designer, Brent Povis, has also started a nice little process blog on the cards on the Two Lanterns Game site. There's probably some overlap, but Brent's approaching the card creation from his perspective, so you might get a different take on things by browsing his posts. Needless to say, we were at each other's throats the entire time, rarely saw eye-to-eye on anything and, at one point, came to bloody fisticuffs over whether or not the sprites on the Fairy Ring card should wear leaves or little princess dresses.

Ok, so here's the scribbly mess I sent Brent for placement approval, followed by the polished sketch. How he made heads or tails of that grotesque rough I'll never know. The handwriting too. Really looks like the work of a trained artistic hand, doesn't it? Ok, on to the color.

I'm just going to let you read Brent's direction for this piece:Three patches of 2-4 chanterelles (one patch in the foreground, two smaller in the background) growing among a continuous sheet of moss and small stones behind or beside a stone-masoned French country house.  There our trees with boughs overhead, but whether individual or clustered, the trees are well spaced enough to see that there are broken skies with shafts of light passing through the clouds.  We can figure that it has recently rained because the clouds are mixed grey and white, the moss is glistening richly verdant, there are droplets on the chanterelles, and drops from the boughs and the house. 

So, I tried to keep the colors subdued and desaturated, trying for that "just after a rain" feel. It was also a nice opportunity to paint in a lingering mist in the background (in the art biz, this is known as "avoiding details work", so I scored there). But I made up for it by painting three days worth of texture and highlights into the mossy hill up front. Win some, lose some.

With the night card, I just turned the lights out in the sky, added some stars, and recolored (or color adjusted) all the other elements to reflect the time of day. Changes in the night version include the objects on the windowsill (pie and apricots switch to chanterelles) and the "plucked" chanterelle in the middle ground. Last thing I do before calling it a night is close the windows and turn on the lights in the cottage.

As usual, to find out more about the game itself, read the reviews at Board Game Geek. Also, a big thanks to everyone who's purchased and enjoyed the game. I don't make any extra coin from that, but it stops Brent from breathing down my neck about my exorbitant illustration fees.-v