Here’s some more work I just wrapped up for Mongoose Publishing’s RuneQuest. I’ll add these to the main site as soon as I get around to making room for them. I haven’t decided whether I want to shrink down all the thumbnails or just do some site reformatting and divide my work up into pages.
No comic this week – I was doing these instead. I’ve got some new stuff kicking around, and more comics coming up, so stay tuned.
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
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.
Hey all! My name’s Stephen Weed, and I’m a freelance illustrator. I’ll be using this blog to upload sketches, ideas, and new work in the near future, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I’ll be working on finishing up my new website, www.sweedart.com.
Thanks for dropping by!
Enjoying: The Engineer
Anticipating: D&D 4e
Studying: XHTML
the fire of September that made us mellow
