D&D Player's Handbook 3

The latest now-annual (or so) release of the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook has just been released. These more frequent releases seem to be working along the lines of an annual expansion for a videogame like World of Warcraft, with add-on characters, classes and stuff. It's a little foggy for me as I stopped playing D&D around the time that AD&D 2nd edition came out.

In any case, I have one chapter-head illustration, which spans most of a two-page spread on pages 162-163. It even features a dragon, which I haven't had the opportunity of painting in some time, and which was loads of fun. The dragon part was even reproduced on the back cover--bonus!

The artwork itself is not on my site yet, but I'll give you a heads-up when it is. This is just meant to keep you up on releases.

Figure Drawing, Pt.18

Above:~6.5x3.5" 10 min. each, pencil

For whatever reason, I wasn't feeling it too much on this particular evening. For the two-minute warm-up poses, after a number of drawing sessions I eventually began doing one sheet on which all 10 poses are arranged on-the-fly. I don't typically like super-short poses, so I needed to find some other way of making them interesting to do, and page arrangement solved the issue.

R: 11x14" 2 min. each, ink

What's a shame is that while it wasn't the case on this night, the 2 minute poses are often some of the best, since the models are able to do more contorted or energetic poses that would be difficult if not impossible to hold for longer periods of time. But with 2 minutes, you're hardly able to study those poses. Another reason why I find short poses to be unhelpful. They can be useful just in shaking out the wrists, and "warming up" your brain for what's to follow. But 20 minutes worth of 2 minute poses is still more than is required for that, it seems.


In any case, after a day of work and a one-hour commute to go draw, you can't always expect to be totally into it. I considered just splitting an hour in and going home, that's how out of it I felt. But I plowed on.

One thing that seemed to get in the way was where I was sitting in relation to the model. Basically, I sat at the bottom of a "U" shaped configuration of chairs, where the models see that point as being straight-ahead. Usually I sit off to one side or other. There is a lamp above them, and for most poses it cast shadows all down their torsos, so there wasn't a lot of good light and shadow interplay as there seems to be from other angles. In those cases, it may have been smarter to either use a mass-shading medium like charcoal, or to just do a tight contour drawing, paying little mind to light and shadow at all. But as I said, I wasn't in a proper thinking mood.

L: 4.5x7" pencil, 20 min.

Beware the Ides of March

"The ides of March are come."

This fellow was featured on Bob Eckstein's great History of the Snowman site.

Friday Night Magic: Ancient Ziggurat

When I was assigned this piece almost a year ago, I was asked to do it in the style of the Alara world (though the game had since moved on). It's unusual to go "backwards" and do something from an older style guide, but this was to be for some sort of promotional card, so normal rules didn't apply. What I didn't realize until maybe just a month ago was that this was an alternate art card, there having been an original "Ancient Ziggurat" illustrated by the talented John Avon.

Seeing John's much later, it's interesting to think about the similarities and differences. I don't know what John's art description looked like, but had I just received the title and the style guide, I probably would've gone in his exact direction too. After all, both our pieces have a bit of forced perspective in them already. However, I had a few things in my description which may not have been in his. Mainly, each level of the "ziggurat" needed to have carvings reflective of the 5 colors of Magic. Given reproduction size of these cards, it meant that I couldn't back the camera out nearly as far as John's piece--I had to bring it in closer so the symbols would be vaguely visible. Also, my portrayal was supposed to be in ruins, where John's was more a depiction of a building in its prime. So mine has been taken over with plants, soil drippings down the walls, and collapsed archways, rubble gathered at the bottom. And lastly, I couldn't use more extremely forced perspective without making the top levels hard to see.

Obviously, this isn't a true ziggurat, though it is stepped. With Magic, you kinda have to be careful to make most things departures from reality when you can. What are the odds that the denizens of Naya would create ziggurats the same as Mesopotamian cultures? Not likely, so it's worthwhile using the word as an architectural family when interpreting it for fantasy art in a non-Earth realm.

The card is available to those who participate in Friday Night Magic events in the month of March only. The cards are foiled, which makes them look neat-o but washes out the color a bit. The artwork is available, and can be seen in full here.

Tips & Techniques: Paper Over Masonite

Almost everything on my site these days reads that it was painted in "Oils on paper over masonite." But what does that mean, and why would you bother? Rather than type a lot, I decided to talk a lot. Hopefully this is useful. As this video blog is a first for me, you'll forgive my forgetting to get a piece of info in! So, more follows after you've watched:

"Desserts and cheeses"

Post-notes: my cat decided to chime in during the middle of it, which is odd because he meows maybe twice a year. My wife asked what I was doing at the very end when I'm standing. Nothing, I'm just rolling one or two more bits last-second after lifting it up, before setting it to dry, having seen some of the edges needed more rolling.

More importantly, I mentioned that I sometimes cut my paper to size, but not always. In this demonstration, I did not. I forgot to mention one thing to keep in mind if you choose to not cut down to size before mounting, and that is that the corners may begin to curl away from the board as it dries. This can be solved while still wet once the rolling is done and you've set it to dry by taking a pair of scissors and trimming in at each corner to the board, releasing any tension that might occur. Here, allow me to illustrate:

Upside down view, but doesn't need to be done upside-down.

And it goes without saying (I hope) that when it dries you'll trim the extra paper off before beginning to paint, and that wherever you set the whole thing to dry, it should continue being raised off the surface with a book or plate or something beneath it. Well that's all for today