LYCANTHROPES!!! pt 2

Fianna

And to close out 2012, here are the other 8 of my Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary job.  All in all, I really enjoyed this revisit with my old garou tribe friends.  This was all familiar and comfortable territory for me but with the excitement of applying eight or nine more years of further-developed illustration skills. Here's hoping the book is a smashing success for my friends at WhiteWolf!

Notice in each piece (including the eight in the previous post) the totem animal or spirit on nature.  Shadowlords is Grandfather Thunder and Wendigo is a cold bitter northern wind spirit but otherwise, they all have specific-looking creatures as a totem animal.  Black Furies' totem animal was not included only because I seemed to have made a jpg out of the version that doesn't have the digitally inlaid pegasus.

Get of Fenris

Black Furies

Bone Gnawers

(I modeled the adidas high tops after my favorite pair from high school.  Sans the duct tape.)

Bunyip

(A forum commenter helped guide me to the right shape boomerang here - this one being more for hunting and killing)

Children of Gaia

Croatan

(This one had a couple reworks to keep her out of the stereotype "Pocahontas" look.  More difficult to do than you'd think!)

Glasswalkers

LYCANTHROPES!!! pt 1

Silverfangs

As I alluded to with my Werewolf:The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary post over on my Draw-Blog, Here are some of the final portraits I did for the series. Eight of 16 to be exact. This was a fun revisiting with the company and game that opened the door to the world of fantasy gaming illustration for me. Rendering werewolves became second nature to me for a good 6, 7, 8 years of my early career.

Red Talons

The muscle memory for drawing anthropomorphized wolves doesn't get rusty for long - even when I'm NOT doing work for White Wolf. I have had to apply that skill to Magic:The Gathering (Innistrad) as well as to World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons.  Given, I draw and paint plenty of other stuff in between, but I haven't gotten tired of illustrating werewolves or creatures that have werewolf-like features like gnolls n' such.

Speaking of gnolls, I may have to post a Dragon Magazine Online piece I did featuring the demon Yeenoghu.  Maybe after these.....

Silent Striders

White Howlers

This was an interesting project in that the art director was posting the sketches as I turned them in to get fans excited and also to get feedback from the fans.  At first, that was kind of off-putting to me.  I listen to my art director but suddenly there was a slew of non-artists and non-art directors chiming in.  It took a little bit to swallow but then I realized that almost all of the comments were very constructive and I actually found myself enthusiastic about the responses and the input.  In several cases, somebody with some otherwise trivial knowledge of something would chime in and I'd apply that little detail. Other times, the comment would be understandable but mostly attributed to that person's personal taste and as we all know, art can never please everyone.  

Wendigo

(Ooooo!  A chance to ape Pacific Northwest Indian design! Score!)

Shadowlords

StarGazers

(My daughter's favorite one!)

Uktena

(Can't resist the chance to use traditional Hopi hairstyle when I can!)

Foolin' About

The day before I posted some White Wolf stuff over on my Draw-Blog and reminisced about my black-n-white White Wolf roots, I was reorganizing a couple boxes of artwork that I had been keeping out for convention use.  Most of these boxes are artwork that has been all but retired - taking up space but not having actually gotten out of my studio and put on a convention table in years.

There was a deposit of old black n' white artwork (mostly pen and ink stuff) in one of these boxes and this old hippie girl piece from the Werewolf tribebook: Children of Gaia was unearthed. I remember being pleased with the illustration despite some proportion problems.

I got a wild hair to scan this piece in, tweak the proportions (her head was too big and her legs were too short), and then drop some flat fields of color in.  Just fun kicks because, ya know, I have SO MUCH time on my hands (not really).

Anyway, this was my little one-hour muck-around project.  Now pass me that roach, man.