I was lucky enough to work on a historical piece recently. A game designed by Kurt Vonnegut in 1956 which remained unpublished until now. General Headquarters, or GHQ. I think the game does an amazing job of recreating his original design faithfully, and the final graphic design and illustrations lend to the experience. Having said that, before we understood what direction we wanted to take aesthetically I made multiple covers for the game. This is one of those concepts. The idea is a bomb landing on Dresden during WWII, but with an eye toward modern aesthetics and sensibilities. It's quite abstract really, which is a stretch for an old guy like me! For anyone who discovers the game, GHQ, you will see that none of these original concepts made it into the game, and that is for the very best. I started with photos of bombed buildings then combined those with stone textures (mostly slate). From there, and with lots of filters, I created the gray plumes that represent buildings and explosions at the same time. Downward brushstrokes to create the crying effect. The very slight background are actual buildings from WWII that were bombed, and lots of filters. The orange explosions are just fancy brushes and more filters. Lastly the foreground extending toward the viewer are again Photoshop with lots of filters to make everything match. Those actually took the longest amount of time to produce. This is rather abstract compared to my normal work, and it's not something I show here normally. As I get older I lean further into these techniques as it makes more sense to do this rather than the illustrative work I've done for decades. I can always paint another wizard or dragon, but that's not particularly challenging. The real challenge is if I can make you feel something. Then, can I make you feel something without images you expect to encounter? So it goes. Thanks for viewing! Pouchy