Crystal Spires

This was one of the terrain tile illustrations in the board game, Xorakus. It’s a digital drawing that I made using Adobe software on the iPad Pro.

I had several tiles in the game that were pretty recognizable types of terrain that exist on Earth, but the game is supposed to take place on an alien world, so “Crystal Spires” was one that was meant to be really alien terrain. I drew some inspiration from Superman’s fortress of solitude, but I freehanded the spires, and the cliffs. I started with a tan background color. Then I began going back and forth with adding some trees, coloring the crystal, and adding shadow and highlights until it started to feel about right. As always, the shadows are cast at the same angle across all of the tiles and the shadows and highlights always bring everything to life and help create a sense of depth. #illustrator