The Pillars of the World PT cover - pen drawing

It looks incomplete but it's not. That's the way it's supposed to be.

Work in Progress:

Related book cover drawings


Thanks so much to `Wishmistress for allowing me to draw the image she created, and to ~Dagwanoenyent-Stock for being the one to provide the beautiful stock in the first place. I know this isn't as good as it could be, but I hope you like it.

The smaller you see it, the better it'll look. So don't see in a bigger size.


I completely overestimated my skills with this one. I just didn't have enough technique or whatever to make a work I find good. I'm not completely disappointed with the result, I'm not so hypocrit, but I wished I could do so much better.

Everything was a challenge. I mean, arquitecture, with a pen. I'm crazy. And feathers how could I think of such a thing. I never planned to draw the whole face because I knew, from the moment I drew the basic rough sketch, I would get the eyes wrong. And I misproportioned the top of the head. I just sketched the eyes and the outline of the face, every other piece was sketched directly with pen and the shading is completely done with pen. The pointism part on her forehead seemed to me to be best approach for such a delicate part of the drawing. I had never done pointism before, it's fun.

I got really lazy and bored with my failure, so I took a long while to come around and complete it, and I did it in a rush. That is my biggest disappointment. It made me become really sloppy.

But anyway, this drawing was only made as a gift to my mother, and she liked it ever since I completed one eye and left the other one in sketch. She got impacient waiting for it to be finished because she liked the very beginning stages of it, and would have been 'completed' that way. Like I said, I didn't want to draw the whole face, but even if I did, my mother forbade me to do it she likes the contrast of the eyes.


Reference: my portuguese version book cover of The Pillars of the World by Anne Bishop [link]
Size: Slightly smaller than A4
Time taken: almost 1 month
Materials: a very cheap paper that doesn't hit A4 size and to which I am getting used to, one pencil with no measures for the rough sketch, rubber, 1 regular black BIC pen, a deliciously calming winter scented candle to sync me with the correct feelings/mood and inspiration.
Music list: Nightwish's album Once, mainly the tracks Higher Than Hope, Romanticide and Creek Mary's Blood [link] . I think the mood matches the concept of the story and characters as I understand them, specially Creek Mary's Blood.


The Pillars of the World belongs to Anne Bishop, original cover design belongs to Alexandra V Bach