I have been so busy with all the projects that I am working on currently that I just have not had time to get a blog post up. I dont want the lose sight of my goal with this blog, which is to give some insight into what I go through as an artist in the niche field of "Old School RPG's", and to continually try and improve all of my artistic skills along the way, and sharing all of that with you select readers of this blog. (You do actually read this, and not just look at the pictures right?)
Since the Port Greely Kickstarter has funded and all my art obligations are complete. YEA!! I have moved on to the AS&SH hardback.
I have been tasked with several of the Class pictures, as well as thinking about which monsters I would like to illustrate as well as "some" magic item and other fill pieces. There is no real timeline for this, though I really do not want to be the last artist working on it, and feel like I am holding the project up. +Jeff Talanian is such a stand-up guy and so easy to work with, that I would hate to have him waiting on me.
Thus far I have finished initial concept sketches for several Classes, and from those have generated pencil work for a few more, (which I will not be showing...yet, no spoilers here.) Though here are a few initial concepts.
On top of that I am drawing an eight level isometric for Shinobi 27 Games and +David Fisher of a castle for an upcoming adventure product. This one is real fun too, lots of round towers....try drawing isometric circles....talk about a brain twister. Really they are ellipses, but ellipses have to be perfect or they look like footballs, and no-one wants a football shaped tower.
Here is a sketch of that, no spoilers as this is just a pencil of an initial sketch, it has been changed dramatically since.
In addition my trip to Garycon netted me more isometrics for the Castles & Crusades System by Troll Lord Games. This is an extreme closeup for a project, with finished inks. More ellipses...yikes!
And, if that were not enough projects on the burner, I was contacted by none other than +Erik Tenkar of Tenkar's Tavern (actually I posted something to his blog, and he in turned asked for a mast-head for his blog) that I have just finished up.
Here is the initial sketch. I will put up the finished one once Erik releases it to the public on his blog.
As it is I am able to work on several projects at once. See Isometrics really take a toll on my brain. Although I have to admit that they are getting easier as I have trained my brain to think in that perspective. I also started doing all of the shading digitally in GIMP, and with my small somewhat useless Wacom tablet, it goes much faster that way.
Life gets really busy for me during the spring time, as both my boys are playing travel baseball, and with practices and what-not it doesn't leave a lot of time for sketching for me, and with all the other drawing I do, I like to keep my sketching going, keeps me in practice while I am on the road, at work or just waiting for an apointment. I use a 4x8 inch Barnes & Noble sketchbook mostly for all my "on-the-go" sketches.
Here are a few quick sketches while sitting at practice.
And we took a rare day in the 70's in April in Michigan to go to Holland state park, and laid on the beach, not one of my past times, but the wife and kids love it. So here is a fantasy version of the Holland Light.
Not the best drawling I have done, but it kept me from going insane on the beach.
Well there you have it. Not much in the way of finished products, but those will come in the future. Hopefully that wets your appetite until I am able to release some more finished project details.
Stay tuned.
Thanks for looking, comments always welcome.
