Father Will Come And Set Me Free

Author notes

Revelation #9 Page 4

Air Raid Robertson

on May 23, 2009

This last piece is probably the one I changed the most from the transition between concept sketches to finished product. The original idea was to have this be considerably more violent and chaotic. The Fourth Horseman was a Grim Reaper clone complete with scythe. He was raising it high into the sky as hellfire devoured the Earth and an army of demons gleefully dismembered and raped various mortals around him. Burning crosses adorned the background.

So yeah, I scaled it back a little bit.

I decided to keep the Horseman in a robe, but I also decided to make his face only partially rotted instead of just being a full blown skull. I excised all the destruction around the Horseman and zoomed in on his features. I knew that I wanted to make The Fourth Horseman appear different from the prior three, and at first making things much more violent seemed like the best choice.

Ultimately, however, I decided that a facial study worked best.

I decided to add color to his eyes to differentiate him even more. I initially wanted to make the horse a pale green as it's described in the Bible, but I thought having a big green horse in an otherwise black and white drawing would be really distracting. The Horseman's eyes seemed like a more effective option. And, to the contradiction of my worries, the end result didn't look all that "Sin City". (The absence of ninja hookers may contribute to this also)

I reduced the number of charred crosses to one, and I went against the prospect of enveloping it in flames. I thought it contributed more to the mood this way.

You may notice that the sky gets progressively darker as I worked through each successive Horseman. I didn't plan it that way, believe it or not. I didn't even notice until I was scanning this last piece into the computer.