Pseudodragon sketch

owlbear sketch

an owl that is also a bear

New Sketch 2

Quick Sketch

Old man and a raven

Quickie – Oh Yeaahh!

‘Kay, dumb story:

Over on the D&D message boards, amongst the whine and revelry surrounding 4th edition D&D, some board member used the term “4th edition Kool-Aid” to describe posts that are saccharine sweet on the prospect of 4th edition, and some other poster was like, “We need a picture of this.” Now, I actually like the prospect of 4e and hope it’s going to be a cool game, but the immediate mental imprint I got from the idea was too corny to pass up. So, to my fellow RPG message board junkies:

So… yeah.  A kool-aid man beholder.  With little ice-cube eyeballs.  Someone obviously needs to shoot me.   Also, I have to go shovel myself out of the driveway now, which is even more lame.

Quickie – Renfield

 

Also maybe a Ravenloft character that I will be playing…

Quickie -Dragonborn sketch

Over on the D&D message boards, there’s somewhat of a to-do about the new revealed player race, Dragonborn. People were puzzling about how a female Dragonborn could look both reptilian and feminine. I decided to try my hand at it to see where it went. This is what I came up with:

with male counterpart for comparison:

 

Mongoose Publishing commission and Dracula sketches

Oops, there went November without a single post. I guess once New Year’s comes around I have a good resolution to set for myself: one post a month at least. So, what have I been up to in the meantime?

Well, most importantly, I’ve done a commission for Mongoose Publishing for their roleplaying game, RuneQuest – a pretty exciting moment for me given my love of RPGs. I drew ten monsters for the interior of their upcoming release, Monsters II. All I know is that any assignment where I get to draw a dragon is awesome. You can check out those pictures on my portfolio page.

Around Halloween (yeah I know, I should really have updated), I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to get into the holiday spirit and ended up wanting to do some illustrations for it. Below are some of the sketches I did for that.

 

Is it just me or is the first part of Dracula a lot more compelling than the second? I’m referring to the portion of the novel where it’s just Jon Harker matching wits with the Count in Transylvania. The cat and mouse games in the beginning of the book are, to me, the most interesting part. While the character of Van Helsing brings some interest to the rest of the book, Stoker starts getting downright sentimental once the story moves to London and the titular character moves into the background. It is, of course, a convention of Stoker’s time, but the cross-admiration that goes on between the main characters got a little trite for me, as did the strained diary format. Lucy Westenra’s last entry for instance, was something to the effect of “Dear diary, I am bleeding to death, thought you might want to know…” A little corny, Bram. The narrative is much more suspenseful when it’s Jon Harker balancing on the edge of a knife while playing the fool for the perfidious Count, cut off from Western society. I’m not saying there weren’t cool parts in the second half of the book, just that the first half was a lot cooler.

Enjoying: The Singing Detective
Anticipating: RuneQuest Monsters II
Studying: GIMP and how to make it work more like PS

shadows and dust

Polyphemus was not amused

I updated my site today with a new(ish) acrylic painting. I always felt a little bad for the cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey. I mean, sure he ate a bunch of Odysseus’ friends, but they were trespassing. And then Odysseus had to go and poke out his eye while he was asleep.  He only had one! Years later, in the Legend of Zelda and other video games, one-eyed boss creatures continue to suffer abuse at the hands of plucky young adventurers. Sigh…

On a similar theme, I did the following sketch… I guess because of a combination of the cyclops painting and the fact that I recently re-read The Hobbit.

Enjoying: The Once and Future King (still)
Anticipating: Portal
Studying: Yoshitaka Amano

The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

New Inkings

I inked these two just recently, so I thought I’d post them. I’ll be painting over these in acrylics. I’m almost finished painting one of their brothers, but I unfortunately forgot to scan it before I started doing so. If I really feel like having an ink version of it, I have the drawing saved on my computer, so I may go back to it yet just for the sake of completeness. Lately I’ve been looking at the work of Franklin Booth and marveling over his excellent penwork, so you might see me liberally borrowing some of his techniques in the weeks to come, just to try some new things.

Enjoying: Foyle’s War
Anticipating: The Spirit!
Studying: Franklin Booth

bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow