Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza in the Amberglass Tower

Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza in the Amberglass Tower, illustration I made for the special edition of the fantasy classic The Gentlemen Bastards sequence’s Book one: Lies of Locke Lamora, written by Scott Lynch and published by The Broken Binding in collaboration with Gollancz . The project includes 6 endpapers for the 3 books of the sequence.

This illustration shows Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza inside her most secret room in the Amberglass Tower, one of the 5 great towers of Camorr, while her servant Stepehn arrives.

Doña Angiavesta is an old, intelligent and eccentric noble lady of Camorr, who makes her best effort to help Duke Nicovante’s Government by her spying web, a fact that made her to be secretly known as The Spider. I must admit I was very fascinated by this character (a mix between Lord Varys and Olenna Tyrell in ASOIAF terms) and really wanted to express her nickname in her secret room, but in a very subtle way, like the secret she’s keeping.

To achieve it, my idea was using some spider inspiration designs, mixed with some art nouveau style to make it subtle, personal and with some old fashioned aura: geometric structures in the window with some colored glass parts missing (like the structure trapting the colored glass instead of being part of it), a circular web structure in the balustrade and book rest, lamps which fall from the roof with a more symbolic and simpler shape than a usual spider lamp, the pattern in her white frock coat neck...etc.It was also important to show the place as a knowledge chamber, a sort of library with a lot of information to be consulted by her owner.

I think the main challenge here was showing the amber glass effect on the walls, as a non full transparent material (as it’s described by Locke later) but able to make the light pass through. This effect would create a backlighting effect which is not very recommendable to show a whole place, so I tried to make light bounces enough to make everything visible. Interior scenes are always tricky, but this one takes the cake.