Vine Growth

I created this piece for a recent Dungeons & Dragons release called Heroes of the Feywild. It was drawn and painted in Photoshop, with a little blending done in Painter. The little fellows being attacked and trapped by vines are spriggans, which are creatures found in Cornish folklore. Traditionally, spriggans are small, grotesque fairies that haunt remote places like ruins, barrows and standing stones. As you can see, the D&D take on these creatures doesn't stray far from tradition. they're still little and still grotesque (which makes them fun to draw!).

Warcraft: Dwarf Warlock and Air Totem

Here are two paintings from the recently released Throne of the Tides set for the Warcraft Trading Card Game. The first depicts a dwarf warlock named Hunrik Blackiron (I love the names they come up with for these characters) fiddling with dark magical energy beneath the waves. The second shows an air totem (an item from the game). While a character card contains features that will almost always be of immediate interest (faces, armor, etc.), cards depicting simple items like this totem present a different challenge. When possible, I like to go for atmosphere in a piece like this and I was very pleased with light and mood I was able to achieve in this one.

Both images were painted in Adobe Photoshop and I've included my initial color rough for Hunrik so you can see where the piece started. I actually worked into the rough a little before saving it so you can a few areas where I had begun to flesh out details.

Dreamblade Gnome

I'm busy working on assignments under non-disclosure agreements at the moment so it's back to the past for today's entry: a Gnome miniature design for Dreamblade. The assignment called for a mean-spirited "garden" gnome wielding some over-sized tools. It was a kick tackling a variation of such a popular, iconic character. As you can see, I provided front, back and side views for the miniature sculptors (that is, sculptors of miniature figures, although perhaps the sculptors themselves were tiny). I also included a side view without the arm, so the sculptor could see the beard and face in profile.

H. P. Lovecraft podcast

This weekend I joined Matt, Dave and Jason of the Bookhouse Boys podcast on their special Halloween episode for a discussion of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, other Lovecraft (and Lovecraft inspired) works and horror in general. We had a great time! Please download the podcast and hear what we had to say (but if you haven't read much Lovecraft, be aware that there are "spoilers" in the episode):

http://bookhouseboyspodcast.podomatic.com

The picture you see above is a drawing I did several years ago for a Lovecraft edition of Graphic Classics. It was inspired by a trip to Angkor in Cambodia. Many of the ruins there are covered in dense, beautiful relief sculpture and since that sort of thing plays a role in some of HPL's stories, I decided to work elements of the Cthulhu Mythos into a relief. I don't think I've ever had more fun working on a drawing!

Graphic Classics comics can be found at http://www.graphicclassics.com