Bit by Bit - Badin and the Secret of the Saami

I am crawling steadily through the illustration phase of Badin and the Secret of the Saami. If I could afford it, I would work on nothing else. Therefore, I will pray for a miracle while I continue to do my best. Meanwhile, until those thousands of eager people will purchase my on-demand photo restoration tutorials or my stock illustrations, I will probably average 2 or 3 completed pages (inked, colored and lettered) per week. For an 80 page story, that seems like an eternity of 50 hour work weeks.

The snapshot at left is a small portion of the western stairwell of the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm. Finding interior source images of this magnificent edifice is very difficult. I've bought every book I could find—and afford—as well as scoured every website I could translate. For one of Europe's greatest palaces, I find the lack of coffee table hardcover photo books about the Royal Palace disturbing. Swedes have a code of modesty in their DNA. But if that is the reason, I have to say it sure frustrates me as an artist—even if I am half Swedish! If I lived in Sweden, I would've visited this place at least twice with a sketchbook to scout for scenes.

Nevertheless, as you can see, I'm getting inspiration from something. This is a small portion of a background image in Act 1 of Badin and the Secret of the Saami. I have modified it slightly for composition purposes. But it is almost identical to the real thing as seen here at Gamla Stan i Stockholm's website.