The scene
From Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985), Chapter IX. The gang huddles round their fire while a storm tears across the desert. Someone comes in to report that the judge is outside, in the lightning and the rain, on top of the building, reciting aloud like a poet composing an epic. It is the moment you understand he is not like the others, that the storm belongs to him. I wanted the whole book's dread in one flash of light. An inspired-by print: nothing in it is taken from any adaptation.
The style
A 1930s and 40s American Southwest desert painting: bold flat planes, strong silhouettes and visible brushwork. I pushed the palette to dried blood, rust, umber and bone white under a deep night sky, and kept the judge small against the storm, a pale figure on the roof with the men's fire glowing in the doorway below.
The inspiration
The look comes from Maynard Dixon's "Desert Ranges" (1940). I borrowed his flat, sculpted shapes and the way he paints the desert as something enormous and indifferent. His daylight ranges aren't here; the storm, the ruin and the figures are my own.
How it's made
I design each scene and refine it until it feels right. It's a print of a digital artwork made in the style of a painting, not a hand-painted original. A typeset caption under the picture names the book, the moment and the style that inspired it. Each one carries my printed "Chapter & Scene" signature in the margin.