I recently finished The Witcher 3: The wild hunt, a game with an incredibly engrossing world, fantastic iconography and lore. I don't typically find myself attracted to fantasy settings, they tend to be filled with cliched tropes, terrible depictations of gender roles and uninspired designs but CD Projekt Red built something that sets itself apart from those fantasy games. 
Coming off the high of finishing the game, i wanted to draw Geralt of Rivia, with his typical nonchalant, blasé attitude. The intent wasn't to neccessarily have an illustration here, I just wanted to draw him. When that happens, there isn't a whole load of planning or thumbnailing. 

After laying down the flat colours it was obvious that a background needed to be added. I try to plan the background into the illustration ordinarily, that way it feels more cohesive but since this was originally just me gushing over the character I didn't give a background any thought.

Since I drew Geralt holding the head of a water hag(great name) it felt appropriate that the background be a place filled with trees and swamps. I opted to have the swamp hidden under a fog, as most swamps tend to be foggy. 

I tend to gravitate to saturated colours and with this illustration I went with my natural impulse to keep it bright. After going through a few colour iterations I consulted a friend(fellow Team Beast Rami Afifi) and he suggested trying to go dark, especially as the witcher deals with alot of dark and gothic themes. Dark was definitely the right choice.