Thought Bubble Poster and Promo // Breakdown (Patreon)

A few months ago I was asked to make the festival promo image for Thought Bubble this year, a comic book festival in Northern England. I’ve heard really great things about Thought Bubble and have always wanted to go, especially after hearing the festival has a special focus on creators. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to make the image for them to promote the show this year- and finally have a great excuse to make the trip the the UK to attend the show.

I thought I'd share some of my process for this piece with you all here and give you some behind the scenes of what that was like to work with Thought Bubble.

To start, here's the full image ~~

When the team at Thought Bubble contacted me they gave me a simple brief of 'make sure it has books/comics in it' with some images of mine that gave me an idea of what direction they wanted to go in, which was a great help getting started. They sent me the Mountain Magic print as the main reference, as well as a few other fantasy prints from my Patreon series, to help me get a clear feel of what they were looking for. 

With these pieces in mind I got to work on some ideation and sketches.

I had a difficult start with this one but knew I wanted to draw a scene roughly inspired by Northern England where the convention is located, so began sketching there.

The landscape really looks like a fairytale setting, with rolling hills and endless sky, so I started by just looking up images of the countryside and interesting historical facts about the area. When there are so many options of what direction to head in this is usually where I start to spark that first idea. As a warm-up, I sketched a few compositions inspired by a big folder I made of saved landscape images and then started on what would be my final sketch. I like to scribble in the shapes and forms, then erase out of them to find the right flow to the image. I usually start with what I know I want in the image, then add pieces to balance that out.

At this point I really only had landscape figured out, so I went to the history of the area to find some fantasy inspiration for the image. I saw that Hadrian’s wall runs over the north of England, and I already love stories of old Britannia when the Romans were scared enough by Pictish and Caledonian warriors that they built a wall to protect themselves. I wanted to add some of that history in the image somehow…just slightly…and show that this landscape has seen a lot.

I started with sketches of Hadrian’s wall, which has a lot of texture to it from the concrete the Romans made from horse hair, mud and clay, so the walls are now dimpled with holes, bits of hair, and speckled moss in some places. Then I looked up Roman archways and built the stones into a portal-like structure. Hadrian’s wall (to the Romans) was like the precipice of chaos- and maybe these portals are something like the entrance to peace and quiet- maybe from the constant call to adventure.

With the sketchy archway in place I started drawing a girl curled up in the grass, enjoying her quiet life with some sheep and maybe fairies. But I couldn’t figure it out. The sheep were all weird and the fairies felt forced. I started drawing the grass around her, making it a bit taller so it could be cushioning her as she reads, making her a bit hidden from the viewer. Then I drew the grass curving around her and it felt more like a creature’s hair- so I turned the grass into a furry dragon’s back.

I played around with the dragon looking like part of the hill, as if it were old and in an endless sleep…but as I drew it I realized I really wanted the story to be about how the girl and the dragon traveled here to be in this quiet, magical place together. I wanted this to feel like a brief moment of calm between their endless adventures.

I wanted this moment to feel like she’d clearly been traveling- through time or possibly realities- to get to this special place for a moment of peace with the dragon and her books. It’s somewhere I often wish I could escape to, to stop time and steal a moment just for myself.

I’ve collected so many books and zines over the years going to conventions and book festivals that I’ve only had time to flip through a few before they go on the shelf. I’m desperate to sit down and enjoy each book…I’m trying to go through one book a day to really enjoy them individually, rather than rushed before they go on the shelf.

After finishing the dragon I decided I wanted to push the fantasy portal idea with a second archway behind the first one. I wanted a low sun creating lots of warm light on the back arch to create a repeating color pattern with the warm tones of the dragon and girl’s hair. I began adding little candles around the stones to add some rhythm, but also to add some immediate history to the piece, rather than just ‘ancient’ history. Who put those candles there? Could it have been the girl reading at night? Are these candles used for reading when it’s dark or are they arranged for another, more unsettling purpose? Could someone else show up and light the candles again? They don’t look like they’ve been neglected for too long.

There was one last piece I needed to add to finish the drawing, and that was a lone tree in the distant background on a little hill. It was an element I’d first started my sketch with, from a photo of the Northern English landscape that I felt grounded the scene in its environment. It was a small but important reminder of this space being everlasting and real. It was also a good piece to add for compositional balance, to counter the heavy bottom half of the image, perfect for saving for last.

In the brief Thought Bubble asked for the line art to be separated from the color so it could be taken apart for promotion for the show, so I sent a photoshop file to them with the file a little cleaner than I would keep my regular files (I am a horrible mess usually in my layer organization). I thought it was fun how they revealed the image slowly and then used it as various sized promo- I’ll add some of those images I snagged from their instagram here so you can see how they took the image a part for promotion!

Hope you enjoy this piece as much as I did making it! The process is always the most interesting part to me and I love sharing my thoughts behind it. Hope it’s interesting! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for reading,

Nat