The Fiery Blanket

Feeling a little uninspired today until I got inspired by a Jason Chan illustration. But I think you'll be surprised by the inspiration.

I'm doing the cover for my unannounced DC project, and it involves explosions. "It started off explodey, but then it got explodier!" [Random link of something that amuses me. I am a bad essayist].

Looking for inspiration for flames and explosions, I found this piece online by Jason Chan.

I might be wrong, but it looks like the flame texture isn't taken from a photograph of flames. I think it's an inverted negative image of something like a leather texture or even handmade paper fibers.

So I was inspired to get a texture for my explosions. Turning around from my work computer, here's what I photographed.

It's an old woolly blanket from my late beagle basset Georgia. Man, I miss that dog. Anyhow, after using a inverting the image and putting a gradient map layer over it in Photoshop it became this:

A lava field or the swirls in an explosive cloud! I'll now paste this as a slightly transparent layer in my illustration. Anyhow, this is the kind of stuff that really amuses me. Think I'm a little punchy and need a break after this...