Innistrad part 3

Four more from the Innistrad Magic: the Gathering block.  The above piece is called "Daybreak Ranger".  I'm not sure how great of a card it is but it seemed to resonate with fans.  It's a fun piece with a ludicrous weapon but my job is to make the ludicrous weapon look cool.  Innistrad is gothic horror setting and much of the look (especially of the humans) was taken from vaguely colonial historical vibes such as what you'd see in a movie like Sleepy Hollow or Ravenous.  However, no musket or other firearm weaponry exists in this Innistrad world so we had to come up with something along those lines but....well, but NOT.  Difficult.  But crossbows and bowguns seemed to do the trick.  How does she fire this without losing her fingers, you ask?  I thought maybe the bow string is held out away from the barrel of the gun just enough to get past her fingers.  Whatevs, I think it looks cool!  And I'm particularly pleased with the expression on her face - pensive and searching the trees for prey.

This one is the image on the back of the above card.  It is called "Nightfall Predator" and is supposed to be the Daybreak Ranger transformed into a lycanthrope.  Thus the similar mood/coloring, etc.

This one is called "GhoulRaiser".  i was having trouble with making it work in the painting phase.  So much so that I scrapped the image about half way through and started over.  but the second time through i went with an extremely limited palette: yellow ochre, burnt umber, and paynes gray.  I added touches of cad red medium later.  I think for this card, the limited palette gave me some focus and it worked for setting up the mood, too.

This one is called "Parallel Lives".  A wolf head (Innistrad wolf, that is) with a mirror image of itself.  I thought this was maybe going to be a decent card and so didn't want to take the easy route and just digitally flip one half of the painting.  So I drew it all out (well, I digitally flipped the drawing to make sure it was symmetrical) and painted it as a full image.  To play up the fact that this was not digitally manipulated, I made sure to make subtle differences here and there - the branches are slightly different on either side and only one wolf has a little drip of drool hanging off its lip!

Innistrad part 2

I'm posting these Innistrad pieces in no particular order to which they were released.  In my head, they're all part of one Magic expansion block so that's how I'm chucking them out there for you to see.  The above painting is called "Ranger's Guile" and is one of my faves from the set.  It's, of course, not that great of a card, but I think the painting came out nice with the rough murky atmosphere.  Plus, I zoomed in a little closer than I normally do for Magic card characters.  I have a bad habit of making my creatures and characters about the same size way too often - cropped at the waist or mid-thigh.  Here, well, the bark-skinned lass is cropped at the thigh but she's leaning in a lot which allowed for a closer look at her skin texture and blazing hunter's eyes.

The painting above is called "Feeding the Pack".  The wretched scan doesn't do the painting much justice here as darks will sometimes become strangely grainy and loose subtle color shifts.  Wizards of the Coast of course worked from the original painting and didn't have to rely on my shabby scan.  Taking a page from Chris Moeller, I got loose and slightly uncontrolled with the brush to create more of a textured and, in this scene, misty atmosphere - and played up the breathe of the horrid wolves.

While Ranger's Guile is one of my faves, "Hanweir Lancer" may very well be THEE favorite of the lot - but only this version.  The final painting, while nice enough, is a little lighter overall and when I tweaked the darkness just a tad, it became much bolder and powerful.  The sketch had two guys in the foreground as well but I nixed them in favor of showing that spray of kicked up dirt and blood, that nice contour of the horse's belly and haunch, and of course, the dude getting trampled violently (see his arm ripping off!).  Also, I'm none too skilled at drawing horses but I'm slowly becoming better.  This is one of my better horse attempts.

One final note, the links to the interview on Geeknation.com that I put in the previous post aren't working anymore.  I contacted the guy that interviewed me and he says he will find a new home for the interview and inform me of it so I can repost a new link.  Sorry 'bout that!

Zealousy, Deflections, Justice, and Interview!

I'll be posting pics of my artwork from Magic: the Gathering's recently wrapped up gothic horror-themed expansion set: Innistrad - for which I also did concept work on (I'll show that stuff eventually over on my draw-blog!).  The piece above is probably the fan-fave of my crop from the Innistrad block - called "ZEALOUS CONSCRIPTS".  That's probably because it's a really great card to play with - but I like to think the image is pretty good, too.  Actually, it's one of my favorites that I did for Innistrad in that it has some bold painting and I got a bit frisky with a palette knife on the lower half of the piece.  I don't often find good opportunities to let fly with a palette knife but this one worked out well.  Side note:  the rough drawing for this piece is over on my Draw-Blog!

This one (called "DIVINE DEFLECTION") is s rare successful rescue of a potential disaster.  The assignment was a complicated action - well, a none-too-complicated action made complicated by having to show a thrown axe being sent back to its thrower.  Showing a whirling axe without trite motion-blur is difficult let alone showing it change direction, too!  Ugh.  So at first, I had the axe deflecting in front of the guy but in mid-color-rough stage  I decided it looked dumb as all get-out.  So I switched the position of the axe and made it whirling around behind him - which compositionally and visually looked much better.  I also had all sorts of kinks to work out on-the-fly whilst painting.  In the end, I actually like this piece and can even deal with the axe looking like it is just flying rigidly and not rotating like a thrown axe probably would.

Not too much to say about "VIGILANT JUSTICE" other than it was fun to play with what is almost entirely a two-color palette.  Plus, I feel pretty good about the gothy manor in the background - architecture ain't my strong suit so when it comes out looking none-too-shabby, I give myself a pat on the back!

I'd also like to mention a pretty good interview I did for GeekNation.com a few months back.  This interview covers a lot of old territory for those of you that have talked to me or read any previous interviews - but it also adds a bit more flavor, too.  I talk in some detail about being intimidated by fellow artists, taking advice from art school professors, what it takes to keep getting work in fantasy illustration (outside of making pretty pictures!) and even the ridiculous cross-section of music I like to listen to!  It's an excellent website and a good interview - check it out!

INTERVIEW PART ONE

INTERVIEW PART TWO

INKED!

I have no tattoos myself - I’m too visually persnickity about a permanent image afixed to my epidermis even if it was applied somewhere that I wouldn’t see it every single day.  But I find really good, well considered, and thoughtful tattoos (on someone else) to be very cool and intriguing.  I’ve been approached many times to design or draw a tattoo for someone - only a handful of times have I felt the inspiration spark and had the room on my schedule to do so.  

The few tattoos that I have designed in the past couple years were quite difficult.  Interesting and challenging yes, but difficult in that they took me out of my comfort zone thus  the progress was slow.  None of the ones I have taken on have been simply “a dragon” or  “a rhinocerous” or something that is strictly a cool drawing.  They have all been very much “custom” according to the person’s idea or character and somewhat graphic in nature.  Mixed with the pressure to make sure the person getting the tat is 100% satisfied with the image, it makes for a bit of bumpy road.  Never-the-less, I have always welcomed projects interspersed in my usual schedule that are a break from the norm.

The back-tat at the top is on a good friend of mine.  He has two older tattoos done some 16 years ago of a pair of stylized, birthday-suited people getting run through gears (most of the original is his own design/drawing).  You can kinda see those in the middle - a horizontal and a vertical one.  He also has two gear tattoos on his shoulders (not pictured).  The idea to be puzzled out  was to connect everything into one big gear-grinding tattoo.  My buddy’s back not being drywall flat made laying it out quite a bit more of a project than I thought.  Connecting everything in a similar motiff and using a similar style was the next challenge.  Below is the complete inked drawing before painful application to my buddy’s dorsus. 

Another friend of mine wanted a very designy tattoo incorporating her two kids’ initials.  My first idea was a single bird wing to go on the scapula area.  After further discussion with her, the design veered more into a pseudo-Victorian wrought iron look.  If you looks closely at both images, you can see not only the initials but the zodiac symbols for each kid, too!  At this time, skin has yet to be bloodied for this piece - for which I’m kinda glad because, looking at it again, I want to make a few more little tweaks on it.

These last two tattoos are previously existing artworks of mine that people liked enough to get them turned to tattoos.  The first is from a sketch I did of an ancient Columbian goddess named Bachu.  The young lady that got this tattoo lives in South America and has an afinity for Bachu.

This last one is of ShriekMaw, one of the more popular cards I have illustrated for Magic: the Gathering.  Speaking of South America, this tattoo was shown to me when I was at a Magic event in Santiago just last year.  And yes, he had me sign his leg!

If you’re interested in having me draw/design a tattoo, it helps if you’re idea is very very simple - that is, lacking in specifics of detail, style, and difficult placement.  The more involved it is, the less likely I’ll have the time, energy, or enthusiasm to take it on. Tattoo designs just aren’t really my thing so the more it can be worked in as a simple drawing (and less of a “tattoo”, the better).  But I’m always open to hearing your pitch.  Contact me at steve2@rottface.com if you’re interested.

Art-Blog starts with a large tree

"Elderlimb"

roughly 12x16

acrylic on bristol paper

$800

I was going to make my first Art-Blog post about the artwork I did for Magic: the Gathering's Lorwyn set back in 2006-2007 and include pics of all the remaining originals I have left, etc.  Alas, I still have yet to take some decent pictures of that collection and think about what I am going to write.  So easily distracted...

But until then, I at least have a pretty picture of a treefolk mystic from the World of Warcraft TCG to show.  I really dig how this piece came out.  There was a lot of fussing with the subtle color shifts in this painting - transitions from ultramarine blue to a bright yellow-green to a soft gray-pink and so on.  Fellow fantasy artist and friend Chris Rahn handles these kinds of transitions really well (masterfully, I might say) applying them to spacial relationships and atmosphere to really set a great mood.

So here is "Elderlimb".  Enjoy!