an owl that is also a bear

Old man and a raven

Also maybe a Ravenloft character that I will be playing…

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.

His slide lecture focused pretty much on his career and his thought processes behind a lot of his paintings. What struck me was that in every painting he does he seems to add some secret personal meaning to it to keep himself invested in it. For instance, he came to a slide of a horror story cover he’d done in 1980 and explained how, even though on the surface it’s just a horror story cover, to him it represented a rough time in his life, and there were little vignettes and personal messages seeded throughout the image that meant things to him, even though to everyone else, it was essentially a skull with some smoke pouring out of it. Maybe it’s little obvious to some people, but I thought this idea of “secret meanings” was pretty interesting.

Anyways, if you haven’t checked out Michael Whelan, he’s an awesome painter and in all respects seems to be a genuinely nice guy, so here’s his website link: http://www.michaelwhelan.com/. I meant to ask him a bit about his technique, but I’m pretty sure one of the sci-fi fans behind me was going to beat me with her copy of The Dark Tower that she wanted autographed, so I thought better of it.

In other news, I’m currently working on some more illustrations for Mongoose Publishing’s RuneQuest, so stay tuned for those later this week.

Enjoying: How hilarious the internet is. Especially the three comments and the corresponding three 5-star ratings.
Anticipating: Some RPGin’ next month!
Studying: some books on Pre-Raphaelite painters I got from my local public library

The universe is flux. Life is opinion.

I’m usually not very political at all, but I wasn’t old enough to have an opinion when this sort of thing was getting talked about in the 80′s, so I guess I’m retroactively getting it out of my system. This is apropos the recent change of the cover of D&D’s upcoming Player’s Handbook because one of the heroes on the cover is a tiefling, which, for those unfamiliar with the geek parlance, is a demony-lookin’-guy. I actually support the change in cover, not because of the tiefling, but because the same artist is doing the new cover, which means I get to see more of his work, which is great. I can also understand WotC’s decision, since they are, you know, a business and do well to listen to their vendors when they voice concerns about whether or not something will be popular, which I read was the reason for the switch. Really the issue and the subsequent message board discussions just got my mental wheels turning about the nature of personal offense. I think my own stance is that it’s possible to keep one’s faith and one’s imagination in separate, well-labeled boxes.

The barrage of nerd in-jokes continues.  The font is a tad too small to read without the help of special ocular implants, so unless you’re Steve Austin, you’re going to have to click on the preview image to read it.  A brief forewarning, if the word “eladrin” means nothing to you, you’re not liable to take much away from this one.  Actually, that’s not true.  My dad liked the part about the sideburns.

I guess this one has a slightly broader appeal than the last one. I had to explain to a couple people why the bad lady with the ‘fro was bisecting those poor rats. Nobody call PETA. Anyways, a proper blog entry to come soon, promise.