Pillars of Affliction

I learned something important about myself during the creation of Pillars of Affliction – something I only recognized once the image had fully taken shape on the page.

The drawing emerged during a difficult period in my life, when I was moving through a series of painful medical procedures and struggling to manage the anxiety that came with them. At the time, it often felt like I was simply enduring the process without any clear sense of progress.

But as the details of the image began to resolve, I noticed something unexpected: the drawing itself was telling a different story. Beneath the tension and suffering embedded in the imagery, there was also movement forward. Even when it didn't feel like it, I was still making my way down a long road toward resolution.

Below, I'll share the inspiration behind the piece, the symbolism within the image, and a look at the core steps in the color process.

The Inspiration for Pillars of Affliction

This post documents the final color stage of this work. The initial pencil and ink work can be seen here.

At the time I created this image, I was undergoing a series of medical procedures related to my jaws and teeth in preparation for surgery. Much of the imagery in this drawing – the distorted mouths, tubes, and mechanical elements – emerged directly from this experience.

As is often the case with my creative process, I didn't have a clear idea of what the deeper emotional layer was until the art was almost completely formed.

I simply knew I had a feeling I wanted to express, and I allowed that to guide the art.

Many of the final elements surprised me, including a powerful figure rising above the pain. In one hand, he firmly grasps a pillar topped by a skull. In the face of an undeniable mortality, he shows stability and a sense of control over his environment.

In the other hand, he holds an alien-like form – an unknown variable – safely contained.

The Process for Pillars of Affliction

The process for the color work on Pillars of Affliction was very much in line with the approach I used on the two preceding pieces, Terminal Order and Emergent Passageways.

All work was done in Photoshop. I first went through and did color separations using an aliased lasso tool. Once I had the flats laid out ("flats" meaning the colors before any highlights or shadows are added, just the "flat" colors), I then worked out the desired color palette.

Here's a look at the full flats.

The general tone of this drawing felt darker to me than Unleashing the Cataclysm or Gaia, and I knew I wanted to approach the color palette in a different way. For inspiration, I turned to some images from Dan Seagrave.

I've always felt compelled to create my own original imagery and approach things in a way that makes sense to me without borrowing too heavily from any specific source. That said, in this case, I admit to overtly stealing the color palette from one of Seagrave's paintings.

Color has been a major obstacle for me over the past couple years on my journey to dial in my own specific, recognizable art style, and borrowing heavily from an existing piece of art in this case felt necessary to get me past a major sticking point.

Once I had tweaked the flats to find a balance in the color palette that felt right to me, I then tackled the process of adding highlights and shadows one section at a time. Many of the objects and figures were first given a gradient, after which I lassoed out areas for shadows and edge highlights and used the Adjustments > Hue/Saturation tool in Photoshop to darken or lighten them.

Final touches included changing the line art from solid black to a deep purple color and highlighting it in places to show lighting sources or, in the case of the background, atmospheric perspective. I also used an airbrush tool to add glows around the moons and the various yellow spots on the figures and objects, such as their eyes.

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That's about it it for this one. I'll have a fresh post soon about the line art for a new drawing I'm currently calling Invocation of the Seraph. (Update: I ended up only sharing the finished art, you can see and read about that one here.)

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