I originally created my 'Mother of Dragons' piece for the start of Game of Thrones Season 7 although the piece took a lot longer to create so I ended up releasing for the season finale instead.
For
each illustration I start with a mood board. So I collect images
relevant to the theme or concept of the piece, and then add more
specific reference to the mood board as I work out what I'll need to
be painting. In this case I already had the pre-existing foundation
of the series visuals and Emilia Clarke to use as reference so I only
really needed to collect images of Emilia Clarke, Danerys and her
Dragon to create the piece.
Initially
the piece was inspired by the HBO advert where the characters teased
in their new season 7 costumery. You can see both of the advert
examples marked (1 & 2) in the mood board below. There was
something about Danerys in this costume, and her expression that
really inspired me to make this piece.
I
created a little Work in Progress (WIP) video to show the different
progress stages throughout the piece. One part of the creation
process that I wasn't able to cover in the video was the colour
scheme choices. You can see below that I whittled the colour choices
from image (1) down to (3), opting for the first sketch (a) to
develop.
You
can see all the work in progress stages in the YouTube video linked here:
Hope
you found this breakdown interesting and helpful. Let me know if you
want to know anything more about the piece!