I wanted it to be something epic. I always liked the over the top fights in anime and martial arts movies so I decided to go in that direction when working on the illustration.

This piece is an illustration for my promotional postcards I’m sending out to potential editorial clients. The inspiration came from a sketch from the 30-day sketch challenge I took earlier this year.

I was playing with it in my sketchbook and was inspired by a samurai exhibit I saw at the Detroit Institute of Art and the Afro Samurai cartoon. After many pages in my sketchbooks (both my physical sketchbook and the app on my tablet) tweaking and changing things I came up with the illustration.