Blessing of the Devoted

This image was created for the recently released Warcraft Trading Card Game set Crown of the Heavens. It depicts a dwarf paladin basking in holy, magical energy. As you can see in the two black and white images above, I initially drew the dwarf with his helmet off. I thought it would be nice to use his facial expression to convey the holy feeling he was experiencing. However, it was decided that it would be better to keep his helmet on for this one.

I've posted a few steps in the painting process. I think they're somewhat self-explanatory so I won't go into great detail about them. In a nutshell, I began (as usual) by blocking in basic colors. From there, I worked up the details of the armor and punched up the lighting (using color and also working with a Dodge layer in Photoshop). Next, I continued refining things and added some upward-thrusting rays of light on a new layer. Finally, I tweaked the values a little more and, using several layers, added in the final lighting effects.