Keep on the Borderlands Alternate Cover Art - Process

I was approached a while back to do my take on the Jennell Jaquays cover art for her iconic module The Caverns of Thracia. Mine's the first one you can see in that post. I liked how that turned out and I liked the process, so I decided to have a go at redrawing the even more iconic cover art of module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. As I was posting work-in-progress shots and musing on the original artwork on Discord, there was a suggestion that I write this up into a post and so I have. Studying the original cover The place to start is, of course, by actually looking at the image I am to recreate. The original artwork is by Jim Roslof, and at least for my money this is the best work he's done for TSR. The vivid and bright colors (though a bit oversaturated in this specific scan of the image) along with the very specific 70s fantasy S&S stylization of the outfits the figures wear just makes it stick with me. CompositionThe composition itself is fairly straightforward - it's a fight…