Yeti!

Below is a picture we painted last fall for Del Rey's El Borak and Other Desert Adventures. It was painted in oil, 12 × 16", centered on a 16 × 20" Ampersand Hardbord panel. It illustrates a scene from Robert E. Howard's story "Three-Bladed Doom" in which El Borak is attacked by a screaming yeti! Needless to say, we had a lot of fun with this one (click picture to see larger):

 Not until it was looming over him, the great arms
closing upon him, did Gordon move...

Usually we'll do numerous concepts for any illustration, but below is our very first thumbnail -- done 2¾ × 3¾" in colored pencil. It nailed what we wanted, and as you can see, apart from the color design, we ended up sticking pretty close to this tiny doodle: