“Monkshood” commission

Here is, in part, the description I received for this commission:

“Perhaps the best way to describe my project is a modern-day Dracula meets Arkham Asylum, but done in a way that represents people with mental illnesses, particularly those who have been found by the courts to be Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. The main setting of my story is “Monkshood,” a forensic psychiatric hospital complex comprised of neighboring buildings from Dracula lore: Seward Sanitarium and Carfax Abbey, and influenced by real-world Broadmoor Hospital in the UK. Monkshood… should be a character in and of itself.”

So with that in mind I came up with this layout:

This seemed too wide and panoramic, so I cropped it down a bit:

This didn’t look sinister enough, so I changed the angle and moved some buildings around:

Then I did a mock-up on the computer of the shading:

And then it was a matter of drawing it full size:

This is as far as I got before Christmas (so close!):

Here is the completed piece:

Here are some close-ups:

Ta-da!

Okay…what’s next?