Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Sickness and Illustration

I have not been well. I have been trying to fight this head cold/allergies on my own with the nettie pot, resting, eating healthy- including downing a few cloves of raw garlic a day. Other making it very unpleasant for my wife, it has not been doing much toward my healing. I finally decided to go to the doctor.
So I am on antibiotics and cake. Hopefully I will mend soon. It has been 3 weeks of not being too productive on the painting front. I am looking forward to being healthy so I can get some real work done, not to mention, if you are out in public and you sneeze or have the sniffles, everyone runs screaming from you like you have the plague. Especially since my sneezes have a very 'swine-like' sound to them. It takes too much time to explain to everyone that I don't have a fever and am not contagious- plus, I like it when people run screaming from me. It feels very powerful.
In addition to being a bit under the weather, I have tons of illustration work to do. Last count, I have about 145 to do by the first of the year. Many are small, and if I am cooking I should be able to do up to 5 a day. It will be close, but I am doing my best to wade in and draw as well and as fast as I can. I have gotten a few done lately that I like, so in order to prove to you that even when I am on death's door I can do good work I will post them below.

I mostly do illustrations for roleplaying games that are either played online or as pen and paper games with nerds sitting around a table throwing dice. The illustrations are usually going off a bit of text in an article or very specific requested instructions.

One of my clients in in the process of writing a new game and has requested all black and white silhouette art for his products. It is called Roguish-Fantasy Adventure Game. Doing these silhouettes is both fun and a challenge. It is good practice for making sure your work reads strongly. Even in fully rendered work I try to make sure I have a strong silhouette.

The first is a good Halloweeny kind of scene. A wizard commanding pumpkin headed scarecrows to attach a band of adventurers. This is not based on real events.

A Hill Giant and goblin army on the march.

A scary view into a tunnel- I really like this one.

These next two are for the Harn Game I do the most of my illustrations for. The first is an exorcism scene (this is sort of what I look like now, with my raw garlic breath).
This next one is your typical knife throwing, skinny, goat headed demon with four elbows. I know it is kind of a tired subject, but I think this is an original interpretation.
I have two art openings this Friday, I will be posting information about them so you can all attend, have free wine and cheese, and see some of my paintings.

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