Cover art for The Harbinger’s Path “bonus booklet”!
I drew the initial idea for this painting a while ago, way back in 2024! I’ll add a few earlier WIP crops in the full post below. Most are from 2024, except for the final one from this past April, which I scrounged up for this post:
2024 WIP’s
Initial sketch.
This is another of the earliest WIP crops I saved. This was before I started “The Harbinger’s Path,” and it was one of several sketches I did now and again involving some of the ideas explored in the comic.
I always wanted to see what Trahearne’s experience at the hands of Mordremoth was like during Heart of Thorns, because given how large his presence was during the Zhaitan arc, I remember his absence leaving this looming presence over me when I first played HoT’s story.
Back when I drew this sketch, I was much less comfortable drawing with lines. You can see how loose and vaguely I sketched before starting to paint over the lines, in both WIP’s above.
This is how the sketch’s lines looked.
Even though I wasn’t comfortable drawing with lines at the time, I’m remembering now that I did, on occasion, attempt some practices with it. This is one of the pieces where, after painting over the loose sketch, decided I wasn’t partial with the direction it was going. And I went back to the sketch, and decided to try out spending more time on the lineart than I usually do.
I was rather enjoying the direction this was taking – but because I was so much less practiced with drawing lines, it was taking me much longer compared to when I do paintings. I ended up not progressing this artwork very much past the above WIP in 2024 – until picking it up again in 2026!
2026 WIP + Final
While I hadn’t touched the piece since 2024, I did vaguely want to finish it eventually, because I did like the concept for it. I thought it could work well. Particularly with the title (“The Mordrem Lieutenant and the Pact Marshal”), which I’d had in this format during the 2024 WIP’s.
Once I knew I would be printing The Harbinger’s Path for Manga Ichiba in May, this was one of the first artworks I knew I wanted to finish for the “extras” portion of the book. Below is how it looked shortly after I started working on it again in 2026, and began refining the lines more:
I finished this piece for the book’s “extras” section, and only had space to add a detail crop focused mainly on Trahearne. I had wanted to show both a detail crop and the full version with text, and had to choose one or the other. I chose the detail crop, as it seemed to fit better, because in The Harbinger’s Path Malyck ends up being more inspired by the earlier “Nightmare Commander” pre-launch concepts vs the “Mordrem Commander” canon terminology. Calling him a “Mordrem Lieutenant” is slightly “not canon” for The Harbinger’s Path – which I understand is probably confusing as I’m writing this. But all that is to say, for the main book, I thought it made more sense to try and have the extras roughly follow the comic’s “canon.”
Once I learned I had time to add the bonus booklet to accompany the main print book, however, this artwork was an immediate contender in my mind for the cover art of the booklet. I would be able to show the full artwork, including the title! I was very excited about this. And, since it is a “bonus booklet,” I thought this book made more sense for slightly “less canon” representations for both characters – including Malyck’s title as a “Mordrem Lieutenant” here.
Even with how I became much more comfortable drawing with lines after starting the comic in 2025, I still don’t refine the lines cleanly as a proper line artist does. This piece, in particular, I had limited time to finish if I wanted to include it alongside the print book. I prioritized the print book’s comic pages, after all – all the extras are purely what I had time to squeeze in! Haha. So these are all bonus material, and I did as much as I could realistically while finishing by the deadline.
This is why, if you compare the lines above to the final artwork, you might notice that Malyck has more “painted” portions to him compared to Trahearne, whose lines are more refined This is purely a time thing – it depends on the subject matter, but depending on what it is, painting can take me less time compared to drawing. This is easiest to see with Malyck’s waist – the design for his outfit is slightly more complex there, and you see how I more imply those features of his coat through painted forms, vs explicitly drawing out every strap and buckle. I would have liked to, but those are less important features compared to the overall composition of the painting – and I had to make some decisions with the limited time I had. I’m satisfied with what I was able to do while meeting that deadline!
And, let’s have the final again once more below:
The style also shifted between the 2024 and 2026 versions. 2024 was more saturated, stylized, and somewhat more cartoony. While the 2026 version leans slightly more toward semi-realism. There are parts of both i like more for different reasons. I tend to like the more colorful style for comic pages right now, and these more muted tones for paintings or illustrations. Though it depends on what it is!
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