One Vile Pile at a Time, Petty Gods Style

The Petty Gods project, as I'm sure most folks know by now, has BLOWN UP. Greg over at Gorgonmilk shot some emergency adrenaline into the heart of what had been a dead/indefinitely forestalled collection of less than commonly worshiped deities from all sorts of OSR folks. You can get the full story here.

I volunteered my scratching and markmaking, completing a total of four particularly foul or corrupt outer beings thus far with more on the way. My first two, the Twin Blasphemies Nug and Yeb, come from Lovecraft through a number of stories which harbor no physical description aside from 'they look like their mom, Shub-Niggurath.'

So I consulted the Mythos-corrupted scholar Robert Parker, tended to his recommended reading (I call it 'research' to those who question my time management), listened to Robert Price read aloud Joe Pulver Sr.'s channeling of "The Black Litany of Nug and Yeb," followed the faint scent of Mesoamerican mythology from the stories, and arrived at a mixture of Shubby and physical descriptions of the Black and Red versions of the Azteca god Tezcatlipoca (Black Tezcatlipoca and Xipe Totec, respectively).

Now keep in mind this was my personal path to crafting an image for the two, as the illustrious James Mishler is writing up the  full descriptions for the two!

This is what came out:

 I also completed The Beast of Unbidden Challenges, based on an excellent description from Nate, the creator of A Desolate Shrine. Here's the cutie:

Following with the mad, lost god Qu'pan, developed by Richard Iorio II, who runs Rogue Games (Colonial Gothic; Shadow, Sword & Spell).

Full stats and descriptions for these godlings can be found in the forthcoming Expanded Petty Gods over at Gorgonmilk. Cheers!

April Art Lottery - Infected Beasts of Hubris

Mike Evans was the first person to submit an idea for the monthly art lottery when I started back at the end of January, and this month that very first entry was drawn!

Mike runs a fantastic blog over at Wrath of Zombie, and he is perpetually writing gaming material, ranging from system adaptations to original campaign worlds. One of those worlds of his, a grim and grimy sword & sorcery world called Hubris, has gleefully commandeered much of his attention. And it kicks ass.

Mike wanted a Tetsuo: Iron Man inspired plague beast fighting and infecting body guards. When I asked Mike to elaborate, he ended up mentioning The Thing as additional inspiration, and that's when I found the look for the beast. Here's the scene:

Ultimately this beast doesn't have quite as much metal on his body as Tetsuo, but the cancerous ick makes up for the missing industrial ugliness.Cheers Mike!

As always, feel free to keep submitting ideas! The next drawing goes down on the 5th of May.

You can submit here.

Revised: DaVinci-punk Wins March Art Lottery!

***So I got a wild hair going and decided to do some extra rendering on Brett's winning description, so after a long night, here's the revised version, followed by the original blog post. Cheers! - DLJ, 03/17/13 ***

Brett Slocum won the month of March, and his idea for the daVinci-punk genre read thus:

"Think of the outlandish costumes and scenery of the planetary romance novels and movies of the 19-Teens and the 1920s as seen through the lens of daVinci's Florence. This setting is what I call daVinci-punk, and it basically asks the question, 'What if the genius of daVinci met a magical artisan equal to his talents, and then Galileo showed them his telescope?' They of course make a space ship."

So I put some mages inside the Duomo of Florence, imagined that a considerable volume of gearing would be necessary to prop up all the parts of the rocketship, and decided to send a young court-sanctioned explorer out to visit the Moon.

Hope you dig it, keep submitting new ideas - yours could be drawn next!

February Art Lottery Winner!

Amidst all the recent commissions at which I've been scratching away, I finished up the first winning image from the art lottery. +Mike Davison 's request won the first round, so congrats man! Here's the pic:

"Best treehouse EVER!"

Mike had requested a Chaos Marine with mutations boarding a space hulk - and in all fairness I spent almost as much time lost on the Warhammer 40k Wiki as I did actual painting, which added to the fun. I chose to approximate a Plague Marine, because I often make a joyous noise unto the Plague Lord anyhow. It was a natural fit.

Don't forget to keep your submissions coming! All submissions that don't get drawn will stay in the lottery for next month, so no need to repeat yourself. Anything that pops into your head, go for it! The submission button is below, and thanks again!

Monthly Painting Lottery! (I make art for you for free.)

Its simple: I want to kick out some jams! and make some artwork for folks in the gaming community on G+ and beyond, and I figured a monthly assignment for myself would be a realistic goal.

All you have to do to for a chance for some free artwork from yours truly is to click the Kontactr Button at the bottom of this post, fill in the form with your info and a description of what you want me to digitally draw or paint, and your submission will be numbered and entered into a new lottery each month. Here's the lowdown:

• On the 5th of every month I will run a random selector and announce the winner on G+ and this blog. 

• I will spend 5 to 8 hours on every piece and do my best to meet the specs in your description.

• I will email you your artwork in advance of posting and discussing it on this blog, which will happen by no later than the 20th of the month. 

• If there's time, I might be able to make some minor changes at your suggestion. If time is short and I can't make changes, please don't beat me. I am a fragile kitten and bruise easily.

• You can submit as often as you like, but keep it cool. Try not to flood me with piles of submissions, as I will grumble loudly and burp acid.

• I promise not to share your contact info with anyone, EVER, and also forever pinky swear not to send spammy things to your inbox.

• If your subject line says, "MAKE ART, MENDICANT!!!" I will love you deeply. 

Thanks guys! Spread the word and submit away!

Them there lines and funny figures.

Its been a bit since I last posted, so I figured this ought to feature some quality eye candy and a bit of insight. I've been rendering some of the final line art for characters in Arcane Knights, and thought I would share a bit of that as well as some process show & tell. The first pic details two playable female characters up on one sheet:

They read well at a distance, and when magnified display quite a bit of detail. This deviates from the painterly style I usually post here, but the process of creating line art for the characters requires me to be explicit with my designs, which aids the 3D artists when they set out to render one of these characters. When painting I can imply detail with a few quick values and let the viewer's eye fill in the rest. Since this is a bit different situation, I thought I would show the process with another playable character from the game, Winton (he's a bomb-chucking wizard).

He comes off pretty sassy. Again, he reads from a distance. Here's a close-up:

I used two brushes with identical dynamics, only one painted black and the other erased. This is a first generation line drawing, meaning that I didn't do a rough sketch and then trace over, but instead drew roughly and messy and continued to draw and erase, draws and erase. This kept the rough, gestural marks in the linework, which tends to keep things a bit more dynamic and alive. In pretty much any art program you can toggle between two brushes like this with hot keys, and its a method exclusively available to the digital medium (just try it with a pencil, wise guy).

After the line work is done, on a layer below, I paint in a 50% greyscale mask to begin toning, like so:

I do this so that I can use layer modes to paint more values and eventually color into the character. Again, this is a feature common to the majority of painting programs, and you'll see it in everything from concept art to comic books to industrial design. I've found on more than one occasion that if this silhouette doesn't read well, it means I need to fix the drawing before proceeding.


After that I start adding lights and darks, like so:

At this point, the drawing provides more than enough information for a 3D artist to build the character. All the details have been designed and clearly drawn and all the volumes have been indicated. I also added some toothy background texture to sell the drawing to interested parties. He can also be colored any which way with overlay or multiply layers, keeping everything nice and non-destructive. Word!

I intend to share some more info on the creation of digital art using Linux based software soon.

Also, I'm always available for commissions for a wide variety of subjects and media, so drop me a line and let's make some sweet art! Thanks!

Notes from the Book of Work-Doodles

Sketchbooks save minds. A quick dash in the sketchbook can help keep you sharp on days that you can't devote a lot of time to finished pieces. Its also a great opportunity to work out some design problems, wrestle with difficult subjects, and prepare for executing fully-informed larger pieces.

Sketchbooks defy sacredness. Sketchbooks should be foul, nasty, scribbled/painted-in, bloody, imperfect spaces where your job is to experiment and screw up as much as possible. No blank sheet deserves the deference given to a blank canvas. A good tip for breaking ones' habit of fearing the blank page of the sketchbook: draw only in pen for a month, working as quickly as you can, and do it every day for that month. This will help you grow comfortable with screwing up, building the confidence to roll with mistakes. Ink may be unforgiving in its permanence, but your design mind will find ways around even the worst screw-ups if you let it.

I thought I would post a few sketchbook drawings here with the hope that other folks making art in the gaming world would be willing to share some highlights of theirs as well.

This is a sketch I made on some downtime at work for Robert Parker's adaptation of the Beastmaster class for his game world, Krul. The following sketch came from the shape of my boss's nose, and from there I imagined a space-faring religious zealot. I think the vacant/reverent look captures the idea pretty well for a sketchbook entry.

Also, I like to throw in some acid-tinged idea collages together with some watercolor and ink, like this:

I like bug people - here's a digital mash-up of three bug dudes from the sketchbook that I drew in the same afternoon using a Pilot V-5, a white China Marker, and some saliva:

I also like to keep it pastoral, in this case using the same tools as with the bug people:

Some sketches demand more time, some only a few minutes. Every one of these has mistakes throughout, but the sketches still come out all right, and more often than not I end up learning something or plotting a better way to draw something in the future. If you have some pieces to share from your sketchbook or happen to know someone who does, let me know! Dig.